Digitalisation and techno-solutionism - Risks of late modern penology

• In Event: Coerciveness, human rights, new penology and reintegration

Abstract

Risk assessments are used at many stages of the criminal legal process, from bail to sentencing to parole determinations, from individual victimisation to collective social harms. Measuring risk means different things in each of these stages, there is a clear tendency in their fundamental principles in different social contexts. The aim of risk assessment and security management in criminal justice is increasingly shifting towards a focus on harm reduction and crime prevention rather than changing delinquent behaviour. With new technologies and external partners in the field of penal justice, risk assessment has become a central element of the law enforcement policy and practice in the last 25 years. Yet, there needs to be more consensus regarding the theoretical and methodological foundations of criminological risk and its social and practical implications. Our presentation demonstrates how information economies have altered the industrial sectors in legal justice and describe the mechanisms through which prevention thinking extends beyond criminal justice systems, legitimising penal sanctions in a broader societal context. We raise questions about the need for a more refined approach to the problem of 'European' penal values, the existence of punishment beyond criminal justice, and the condition to study the whole array of forms of legal coercion and detention, as well as the fear as a significant political advisor.

Authors

• Klára Kerezsi, National Institute of Criminology (Hungary)

• Veronika Nagy, Utrecht University