Demanda Real estimada por población 2015-2019

The relationship between crime prevention, public protection, the management and punishment of offenders and mechanisms of measuring risk has become a major and influential aspect in the underlying composition of the implementation and delivery of sentencing provisions within criminal justice systems. Risk analysis as a subject of inquiry and an apparatus of informed quantitative reasoning has become the dominant procedure used to predict behaviour and situate individuals according to the level of risk they pose. Such mechanisms, which are used to translate expert knowledge into practice, symbolise a way in which risk discourses are understood and managed within criminal justice systems and its agencies. It is in this sense that contemporary risk discourses, which are instrumented through systems and institutions of risk-assessment, risk-analysis, risk-communication, and risk-management, shape overarching principles and practices that frame the practical ways in which criminal justice agencies define and respond to individual risk-taking behaviours (Boyne 2003). The language of risk then, can be understood as having become a central component within criminal justice and penal policy and is embedded within ways of thinking about and responding to risk- taking behaviour, particularly in relation to criminality.

According to Foucault (1991), governmentality relates to an approach of social control and regulation, which for Foucault has come to dominate the exercise of power within western societies. Advocates of Foucauldian theory suggest that recent criminological advancements have developed around a different kind of power interest, namely actuarial mechanisms of regulatory power (Garland 1997, Feeley and Simon 1994). Questions such as ‘Why do people commit crimes?’ are no longer concerned with the why and the causes of crime, but instead have shifted towards an actuarial approach concerned with crime control strategies aimed at prevention. This implies that it has become generally accepted that people do and can commit crimes, with a new emphasis placed upon modifying and managing offending (Mcguire and Priestly 1985). In doing so, criminal justice practices have moved away from understanding why people commit crimes and what influences offending towards an accepted and taken-for-granted

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understanding that the regulation of offending behaviour can alter the way in which offenders negotiate the law.

This is, in part, because of an invested interest placed in systems of expert knowledge and expert cultures (see Boyne 2003) that have become a fundamental aspect of governmental techniques and practices. Actuarial techniques provide a basis for constructing the individual and populations as variables. Populations are surveyed, compared against norms, and through governmental strategies individuals are coerced to conform (Lupton 1999). Following this line of reasoning, risk may be understood as a strategy of regulatory power, wherein expert knowledge is utilised to regulate and manage offenders and their behaviour through actuarial-based technologies. It is here that macro perspectives of risk are drawn to the idea that its technologies and apparatus can introduce social regulation and control through discourses of governing.

One example of crime control techniques is that of the recently revised Criminal Justice Act 200313 and the introduction of the National Offenders Management Service (NOMS), a statutory framework that encompasses the governance of offenders through robust requirements and formal guidance, primarily aimed at preventing re-offending and public protection by addressing and managing risks associated with offending. Often described as a new penology (see Feeley and Simon 1992, 1994) this concept of risk-management positions the individual as a target for change (Kemshall 2003). Through specialised forms of knowledge and interventions, coercive strategies are utilised to govern and regulate aggregate groups of offenders and less direct strategies are implemented to promote voluntary compliance (Lupton 1999). It is assumed that the responsible individual will self-regulate, self-scrutinise, and self-manage through risk-avoidance, rational choices, and a constant monitoring of their own behaviour (Kemshall 2003, Rose 2000). In contrast, the offender is to be steered away from irrational choices and decisions as part of a wider remoralisation and responsibilisation agenda (Kemshall 2003).

On the surface, contemporary notions of governmentality appear to present distinct boundaries between macro perspectives of risk and the everyday. However, it could be

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The Criminal Justice Act 2003 can be viewed at

suggested that within a framework of governmentality the individual becomes the machine by which the state is able to function, positioning him/herself as an authority of power over the body; it is against this dominant discourse of macro perspectives of understanding risk that a counter discourse can exist. Individuals who construct their knowledge and experiences within the context of their everyday lives are described as engaging in risk-taking behaviour as escapism from the highly controlled body and self (Douglas 1966, Cohen and Taylor 1992 [1976], Lyng 1990). Here, micro discourses around risk and pleasure reject the ideal of the responsible civilised body and replace it with a discourse that emphasises the pleasures of an uncivilised or grotesque body (Stallybrass and White 1986). The individual attempts to retain control or resist technologies of coercive mechanisms of governing by challenging ownership of their self and their body.

Having discussed risk assessment as a process within chapter two, this chapter will explore how contemporary risks that are embedded in actuarial-based technologies have come to hold importance in the policies and practices of criminal justice. By highlighting academic debates around governance, which are achieved through the application of expert knowledge and power interests, this chapter will explore invested interests in actuarial-based risk as a technique for governing offenders and their behaviour. In the absence of alternative means of understanding risk and risk-taking, chapter four will explore notions of risk from an alternative perspective by exploring different ways in which individuals construct their experiences of risk in relation to their day-to-day lives. This does not suggest two opposing or competing risk discourses, rather this suggests diverse and varied ways in which risk can be represented. This chapter will first explore governance and its relationship with the body.