NCJ Number
209000
Journal
Criminal Justice Policy Review Volume: 16 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2005 Pages: 38-58
Date Published
March 2005
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article assesses current trends in the application of risk discourse as a way to facilitate the eradication of deviant behavior.
Abstract
The author demonstrates the relationship between contemporary risk discourse--as articulated by politicians, law enforcement agencies, academics, and social workers--and the social control of juvenile populations. The most widely accepted conventional risk indicators for deviant juvenile behavior are teen pregnancy, school failure, drug abuse, suicide ideation, and incarceration. Risk factors applied to an individual or group tend to marginalize the individual or group as an object of fear that is targeted for social control. This article further argues that the discourse of risk that perpetrates fear marks an attempt by dominant cultural institutions to separate youth populations for social control through a "master narrative." Drawing on risk analysis characteristics of the actuarial sciences, the master narrative seeks new technological and rhetorical devices to stimulate docility, thereby generating enhanced social control. These new strategies are marketed to the public as ways to enhance safety. Overlooked in purported objective risk analysis is the political motivation for social control by cultural institutions and actors who directly benefit from the maintenance of status-quo structural conditions. This article identifies and explains those structural conditions most likely to generate increased risks for families and communities, but which are typically absent from actuarial accounts of risk. 3 notes and 85 references