Crime in an Insecure World investigates the alarming trend
across Western societies of treating every imaginable source of
harm as a crime. It locates this trend in the 21st century
obsession with insecurity fostered by neo-liberal governments. It
explains why selected issues of national security (threats of
terrorism), social security (benefit system integrity), corporate
security (liabilities for harm) and domestic security (anti-social
behaviour) are at the top of the political agenda. It documents how
this politics of insecurity leads to enormous expenditures on risk
assessment and management that ironically reveal the limits of
risk-based reasoning and intensify uncertainty. Catastrophic
imaginations are fuelled, precautionary logics become pervasive,
and extreme security measures are institutionalized.

The security measures include the invention of disturbing new
forms of 'counter law' or 'law against
law'. Counter law criminalizes not only those who actually
cause harm, but also those merely suspected of being harmful, as
well as authorities who are deemed responsible for security
failures. Traditional principles, standards and procedures of
criminal law are eroded or eliminated altogether, and civil and
administrative law become more salient in processes of
criminalization. Counter law also involves the innovative expansion
of surveillance technologies and networks. CCTV, smart cards, data
matching, data mining, and private policing all facilitate
criminalization of the merely suspicious and security failures.
Security trumps justice, and uncertainty proves itself.

This book is grounded in leading-edge theory and research across
academic disciplines. It contributes to the most critical and
contested debates in 21st century politics. It is of great interest
not only to students of politics, sociology, law, criminology, risk
management and public policy, but also to the general reader.