ABSTRACT
There is now a well-established international consensus amongst criminal justice policy makers and practitioners that various forms of risk management can be used as predictive tools. Internationally governments identify crime as a major problem which needs to be managed through various forms of individualised actuarially based risk assessment. Risk management constitutes a significant paradigm change within criminal justice practice throughout Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In this chapter risk-based policies and practices will be placed within the context of a wider
societal shift towards the ‘risk society’ in neo-liberal and social democratic states over the last twenty years. Although the contours of criminal justice policy have been shaped by a political preoccupation with risk, there are important differences in policy approaches to crime, personal, and collective security. It will be argued that ‘problem, policy, and political streams’ drive ever changing and frequently contradictory master risk narratives. Risk discourses are modified and recreated by politicians in an attempt to read and respond to public ‘mood’. However, concentration on individualised risk assessment has diverted attention from the risks to public safety created by structural inequalities. Moreover, an over-emphasis on risk appears in many instances to be accompanied by a more
punitive approach, particularly to young offenders.
