NCJ Number
188439
Journal
Punishment and Society Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2001 Pages: 203-220
Date Published
April 2001
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article explores the implications of shifts in thinking about security and justice and argues that the emergence of a logic of risk is changing the way in which punishment is being used as a tactic of governance.
Abstract
The analysis considers the governance of security as all efforts intended to create spaces within which people can live, work, and play safely and not simply as policing. The discussion contrasts the retributive approach and its focus on past actions with a risk-focused approach that seeks to anticipate problems and avoid them and regards punishment as one of many possible responses to a past action. The analysis notes that risk and its management currently occupies a central place in human affairs and that a risk-focused approach is neither soft nor hard regarding how to handle people with behavior problems. The logic of risk has begun to permeate government institutions in ways that are fundamentally changing criminal justice to adapt other ways of regulating security to a risk-focused mentality and to develop networks of security institutions that include both public and private resources. The logic of restorative justice also fits easily with the logic of risk. If these concepts continue to gain ground, they will have significant implications for the use and justification of punishment within the governance of security. Notes and 28 references