A Risk-Taking Criminology

A Risk-Taking Criminology

Critical criminology is deep in one of its more pessimistic phases, beset by a culture of control in which constraining risk techniques perform an ever more intrusive and negative role. There is a lot of truth in this vision of criminal justice, and there is no point ignoring the obvious. On the other hand, there is also no point in criminologists simply cataloguing each new risk-based retreat from progressive criminal justice and confirming the hopelessness of the situation. We have seen already that in the belly of the neo-liberal, crime-controlling beast there are risk-based techniques that could provide a platform for a more positive, if nevertheless ‘dangerous’, approach to the governance of crime. Drug harm minimization, risk-needs-responsivity and developmental crime ...