New Technologies of Responsibility and Limits to Prevention

• In Event: Emerging Frontiers in Crime, Control, and Prevention

Abstract

In this contribution I depart from the influential work of both Lucia Zedner (on ‘Security’) and Nicola Lacey (on ‘Criminal Responsibility’) to study ‘new’ forms of preventive control and regulation of antisocial behavior in public space. In fact, Lucia Zedner (together with Andrew Ashworth) has used Nicola Lacey’s ‘technologies of responsibility’ before, and referred more specifically to a ‘new form of responsibility founded in risk’ that leads to the emergence of ‘new regulatory institutions’ to incentivize ‘the formation of habits of good citizenship’.
The work of both Zedner and Lacey raise important questions related to the assumption that prevention, in contrast to repression, is by definition ‘good’ or ‘desirable’ (because ‘it is better to be safe than sorry’). Moreover, in a pre-crime era boundaries between prevention and repression become blurred. Based on illustrations mainly related to discussions about public order in Belgium, I believe that it is necessary to fundamentally think about the limits of prevention. In a final part of this paper I will also reflect on the question to what extent these ‘new’ forms of pre-crime control around a ‘technology of responsibility founded in risk’ are truly ‘new’.

Author

• Stefaan Pleysier, Leuven Institute of Criminology (KU Leuven)