Critically examine the suggestion that punishment today is as much about risk management as it is about reducing re-offending.

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Contemporary Criminology                Student No. 481365

Critically examine the suggestion that punishment today is as much about risk management as it is about reducing re-offending.

In a broad sense the identification, classification and regulation of risk is very much a modern pre occupation that permeates many different areas of our daily lives. From terrorism to natural disasters, risk and how it might best be managed is a theme that is pervasive in modern life (Donoghue, 2008, p. 338). As Beck (1992, p. 174) highlighted modern society, by virtue of its inherent uncertainties and resulting insecurities, has become increasingly concerned with risk and its management. For criminologists this is an important factor in the understanding and explanation of current developments in crime control and penal policy (Kemshall & Maguire, 2001, p. 243). Feeley and Simon (1992, p. 450) argue that there has been a radical shift to a new penology, with the emergence of new discourses and the deployment of new techniques, the disciplinary focus has shifted from one based on individual behaviour and the possibility of change, towards the management of risk.  This essay is going to critically examine the suggestion that punishment today is as much about risk management as it is about reducing offending, in order to do this, this essay will first critically examine the development of risk management. It will then move on to critically examine actuarial justice, a term first used by Feeley and Simon (1992, 1994), a method of predicting behaviour and situating offenders according to the risk they pose.

The end of the twentieth century saw increasing lack of faith in the modernist penal agenda and a crisis in penal modernism.  The modernist penal agenda can be categorised by its penal welfare techniques and as Garland (1995, p. 192) highlights it saw a shift from individualism to individualisation. The focus of modernist penal agenda being to assess and classify offenders, using 'psy' disciplines for reforming techniques aimed at the normalisation of the offender and reducing re-offending. Kemshall (2003 P. 16) explains that this was essentially a period that saw the replacement of prohibition and penality with corrective treatments towards pre specified normative requirements. Modern penality presumed that a normal individual could be trusted not to reoffend due to the state induced self-control that was carried out through the work of various institutions of the social realm, i.e. education and welfare agencies.

However, this modernist agenda came under criticism not least because of the failure of such techniques to reduce re-offending, as Garland (Garland, 1995, p. 193) points out there is wide acknowledgement of fundamental failures within modernist criminal justice to change offender and reduce re-offending. The debate about how to protect the public from the risks offenders pose was sparked off in earnest (Kemshall & Maguire, 2001, p. 239) back in the 1970s by a highly publicised murder case. The case involved a diagnosed psychopath called Graham Young who had been committed to a Special Hospital after poisoning members of his family; he was later released without any effective supervision or management and committed further murders by a similar means.  The eventual outcome of this case was a variety of proposals for sentencing reforms and a demand for improved risk management of dangerous offenders (Kemshall & Maguire, 2001, p. 239). During the 1980s concerns continued to grow about dangerous offenders being released from prison and how they are managed in the community, a kaleidoscope of other factors ranging from theoretical objections, to the then increasing crime rates and a lack of faith in penal experts, in particular the capability to change offenders and reduce reoffending has seen a demise of the modernist ideal of normalising offenders (Cheliotis, 2006, p. 315). In the wake of this 'nothing works' ideology and the associated failures of the expert system central to penal modernism the notion of crime as risk has emerged in criminological theory to describe a collective adjustment in our perception of crime. This notion of crime as risk implies rejection of or at least modification of modern penailty's quest to eliminate crime by normalising the offender in favour of more modest managerial objectives (Robinson, 2002, p. 7). Hannah-Moffat (2005, p. 30) agrees with this view and argues that welfare strategies within punishment are being displaced by risk management and its associated actuarial strategies, shifting the focus away from individual rehabilitative models. Feeley and Simon, (1992, p. 452) claim that this new penology does not seek to change the offender through targeted interventions to reduce re-offending rather it is concerned with effectively identifying and managing an offender at risk of re-offending, while minimising the potential risk to the community.

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Simon (1998, p. 772) argues that in response, organisations involved in crime control are now turning their resources to predicting behaviour and situating offenders according to the risk they pose. This goes beyond mere assessment of risk according to Cheliotis (2006, p. 317), risk is intrinsically bound up with the notion of actuarial justice, a term first introduced by Feeley and Simon (1992, 1994) who claim that its roots are now established firmly enough to have created a new penology. Actuarial justice (Feeley & Simon, 1992, p. 453) embodies an intelligible systematic discourse concerning the prediction of crime through risk ...

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