Against Evidence-Based Oppression: The Criminogenic Consequences of Actuarial Justice and the Notion of Risk

• In Event: Dangerous Subjects, Actuarial Knowledges, and Revisiting the ‘New Penology’: Critical Carceral Studies

Abstract

The actuarial model and the notion of risk are pervasive not only in sentencing and corrections, but also in the science of (crime) prevention. Critics have shown, however, that the aura of science conceals the political, cultural, and subjective nature of the processes of constructing threat, identifying offenders, and designing measures to neutralize the offender or pre-offender. Given that the actuarial model and the notion of risk undergirds evidence-based best practices, more attention needs to be paid to the subjective factors that guide the selection, implementation, and evaluation of them. This paper contributes to this needed analysis by exploring various long-term direct and collateral consequences of actuarial justice in reconstructing individuals and social phenomena as risk objects in the context of community crime prevention. It details ways in which a sole reliance on evidence-based programs imposes an overly narrow view of acceptable practice that are also wholly out of line with the way on-the-ground prevention actually takes place and with the lived realities of those ‘at-risk’. Evidence-based programs may tamp down social tensions and decrease street crime, but they rarely address root causes and their effectiveness is paid for through numerous ‘externalities’ that are socially costly for long-term community health.

Authors

• Tim Goddard, Florida International University

• Randolph Myers, Old Dominion University