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Policing crime risks in the neo-liberal era
DOI link for Policing crime risks in the neo-liberal era
Policing crime risks in the neo-liberal era book
Policing crime risks in the neo-liberal era
DOI link for Policing crime risks in the neo-liberal era
Policing crime risks in the neo-liberal era book
ABSTRACT
In 1990 I wrote a paper eventually published under the title ‘Risk, Power and Crime Prevention’ (O’Malley, 1992). It mapped out a model of risk-based regimes of government as the product of two related changes that had occurred since the 1970s: the erosion of the welfare state’s ‘social actuarialism’ (epitomized in the model of social insurance); and its displacement by an individually-based risk management or ‘prudentialism’. The paper suggested that risk itself was not a new category in government, but appeared to be novel because of the radical change in its configuration from social to individualized forms. It further suggested that we could not understand this shift unless we paid close attention to its nexus with the ascendancy of neo-liberalism. Using the example of crime prevention, it proposed certain elective affinities between themes in neo-liberal rationalities and risklinked trends in crime control policy and practice:
• Particularly in the field of administrative criminology, predictive, risk-oriented rational choice models are displacing socially oriented and explanatory criminology. These are consistent with neo-liberalism’s distaste for social causation and models of social justice, and with its emphasis on the individual responsibility of offenders;
• In their turn, these elements are highly compatible with the promotion of tariff-based ‘truth in sentencing’ models of punishment and deterrence over more indeterminate and rehabilitative ‘welfare sanctions’;
• Neo-liberal agendas of individual responsibility and ‘activity’ foster devolution of crime prevention to the citizenry and promote risk-based models for governing crime in the community;
• Rationalities of cost effectiveness and protecting the consumer reinforce these themes to promote risk-based, preventative interventions.