Risk

Defining Risk

Mary Douglas explains that the original meaning associated with risk implied neutrality—risk simply took into account the probability of losses or gains (1994: 23). The roll of a dice in a game of chance, for example, implies that the rolled dice may bring either wins or losses—the rolled dice itself is not the risk but, rather, the risk is associated with the consequences of a particular outcome. Douglas further explains that any process or any activity has an associated probability of success or failure, gain or loss. The key to Douglas's definition is that risk is part of every behavior. It is not, and cannot logically be, either a characteristic of a participant in crime (identifying “at-risk” individuals, for example, makes little sense when risk inheres in processes versus conditions), or a characteristic of a crime location.

The concept of risk as it is used in criminology is mistakenly associated with negatively construed conditions, characteristics, or identities associated with persons, places, or contexts (hazards), a negative process or behavior, or negative consequences associated with these conditions or behaviors. There is no place in the criminology literature for the positive aspects of risk—the probability of gain associated with neutral or positive (i.e., not hazardous) conditions. Criminology's failure to explore in depth the positive side of risk, the possibility of gain, has limited the understanding of the extent to which undesirable behavior may be promoted as acceptable and even desirable behavior.

Some forays into this idea have led to ideas such as the “seduction of crime” (Katz 1988) or “crime as social control” (Black 1983). In both instances, crime takes on a positive characteristic for those involved in it. The enjoyment of crime's risks and the potential for thrill may entice someone to behave criminally, often against all odds of escaping detection. In a different (less self-absorbed) way, crime as social control suggests that individuals who break the law in retribution or retaliation for some harm do so as a means to punish others or to keep them from repeating their criminal actions. This is done without invoking the might of the police in dealing with their antagonists.

Risk analysis, then, is not a neutral, objective undertaking. What is harmful, dangerous, or evil (hazardous) is not necessarily objectively identified, especially when it comes to the association of such hazards with criminal events. The identification of hazards is as much a normative as it is an objective enterprise. As Ericson (1994) remarks, experts edit reality and at least partially mask the perils that people face. Further still, what comes to be identified as a hazard is integrally related to the technology employed to identify hazards. For example, the identification of crime-related hazards has been facilitated by computer programs that make it [Page 1408]possible to manipulate data on large numbers of cases and calculate probabilities instantaneously. This is precisely the criticism that may be leveled at crime analysis technologies—what is defined as hazardous is a product of what can be identified as hazardous.

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