ABSTRACT
The risks that crime poses to the security and well-being of citizens, and responses to crime-risk by states, firms, individuals and social movements, are among the most salient and contentious topics in the cultural and political life of late modern societies. ‘Crime’ connotes, inter alia, harm, violation and loss; menace, mistrust and fear; blame, punishment, exclusion and censure. (It should at the same time not be forgotten that ‘it’ may signify inter alia excitement, thrill, escape, bravery, self-assertion, aspiration, opportunity and membership.) As Giddens notes in another but not altogether unrelated context, what is ‘out there’ in the form of the changing landscape of risks is also ‘in here’ in the shape of our inventories of worries, anxieties, resentments and defences. Like the practices in which we engage to insulate ourselves from it, or to secure ourselves against loss and harm, crime is necessarily both materiality and meaning.
