ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the different perspectives available to criminology to make sense of risk, fear and security in the face of the rising concern with international terrorism. It also traced the way in which risk as a concept has been used within criminology and moved politicians, policy makers and criminal justice professionals from a preoccupation with prediction based on what was to modes of prediction based on what if. Much of the work on risk can be situated along a continuum between two paradigms: realism and constructivism. The boundaries between and within the literature discussed here are fuzzy, not distinct, and epistemological commitments to the paradigms of realism and constructionism are variable. These caveats notwithstanding the author consider the problems and possibilities associated with the realist underpinning of risk assessment practices. From Ulrich Becks perspective, the events of 9/11 could be considered to be a classic risk society problem since they carry with them all the hallmarks of manufactured risks.
