This volume brings together a set of novel approaches to the governance of security. In the age of postnational terrorism and post 9/11 surveillance societies traditional perspectives seem to miss the point. On the one hand, normative theories like that of Beccaria require serious re-construction to still provide normative guidance as to the role and the limits of the criminal law. On the other hand, notions like that of risk-assessment run into problems when applied to the complexities of local safety issues that are enmeshed in global developments. Picking up on Johnston & Shearing’s concept of ‘nodal governance’ and Ulrich Beck’s call for a more contextual approach to risk and its remedies, the authors of this volume share their analyses of issues of safety and justice at the theoretical, institutional and empirical level without resorting to overly general approaches, grand theories or reductive quantitative models. In doing this they carefully explore the tensions between new models of crime control and the normative underpinnings of the Rule of Law.

Target group

Criminologists