ABSTRACT
The key tenets of neo-liberalism regarding risk, governance, and responsibility are critically evaluated through an empirical study of the private insurance industry. This chapter explores how, as a central institution of governance beyond the state, private insurance is an industry that is increasingly deeply involved in policing and the management of crime risks. Moral hazards embedded in the social organization of private insurance lead to various kinds of immoral risky behaviour by insureds, insurance companies, and their employees, and to intensified efforts to regulate this behaviour. Neo-liberal criticism of the welfare state is based on the view that welfarism generates intractable problems of moral hazard. This official is pointing to the fact that there has been a substantial expansion of private policing personnel and technologies in the private insurance industry. The insurance industry is the first to recognize the myriad moral hazard problems embedded in the ways in which sells its products, invests, and insures itself.
