Beyond public protection
| Date | 01 August 2007 |
| Author | Jason Wood,Hazel Kemshall |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895807078860 |
| Published date | 01 August 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
© 2007 SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
and the British Society of Criminology.
www.sagepublications.com
ISSN 1748–8958; Vol: 7(3): 203–222
DOI: 10.1177/1748895807078860
203
Beyond public protection:
An examination of community protection and public
health approaches to high-risk offenders
HAZEL KEMSHALL AND JASON WOOD
De Montfort University, UK
Abstract
Public protection has become a key theme of much recent criminal
justice legislation and policy aimed at the effective management of
high-risk offenders. In this article we draw on two recent research
projects to examine the two main approaches to public protection:
the community protection model, and the public health approach.
Drawing on the recent work of Pat O’Malley we examine the
underpinning assumptions of each ‘risk technology’ and how each
constructs notions of both offenders and the public in their
approach to risk regulation. The article concludes by arguing that
each differs significantly in the extent to which they either include
or exclude high-risk offenders (particularly sex offenders), and in
their expectations of public responsibility for risk management.
Key Words
child sexual abuse • public protection • risk
Public protection has become a key theme of much recent legislation and
penal policy resulting in increased formal procedures and multi-agency struc-
tures to risk assess and manage the ‘critical few’ (Criminal Justice and Court
Services Act (CJCS), 2000; Criminal Justice Act, 2003; Home Office, 2004).
To date, public protection has been the preserve of professionals and vested
with a few key agencies such as police and probation. The public and victims
have been largely excluded, and Connelly and Williamson (2000) have de-
scribed this as a ‘community protection model’ in which the appropriate
ARTICLES
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containment and effective management of high-risk offenders is paramount.
However, alternative approaches are now emerging, notably within a ‘public
health approach’ (PHA) with an emphasis upon public awareness and educa-
tive campaigns to extend the remit of public protection to local communities
and the general public.
In this article, we consider these two current positions to public protec-
tion, and the underpinning assumptions of each approach. In his recent
work, O’Malley (2004a, 2004b) has drawn attention to the diversity of risk
technologies, arguing that there can be a number of configurations to risk-
centred government. O’Malley analyses the pervasive discourse of risk in
contemporary life and asks the key question: ‘Do these differing risk tech-
niques have the same governmental implications for how we live our lives
and what kind of people we are being made into?’ (2004b: 6). He argues
that risk technologies should not be collapsed into ‘one undifferentiated
category’ (2004b: 6), and that analyses of diversity are important in order
to understand ‘present practices of government’ (2004b: 7). For O’Malley
there is no ‘inescapable logic of risk’ (2004b: 7), risk technologies are
always a matter of choice, contingency and selected interventions, and they
have implications for who we are and how we are governed. He contends
that risk is never ‘technically neutral’ but is always a ‘moralised form of
government’ and that the ‘specific moral foundations should be made explicit’
(2004a: 326). The risk practices favoured by neo-liberal regimes are not
necessarily pre-ordained, and O’Malley argues that risk management tech-
nologies could be therapeutic and restorative as well as punitive and exclu-
sionary (2004a, 2004b).
The function of risk to both include and exclude has been much dis-
cussed in both sociological and criminological literature (see, for example,
seminal texts by Douglas, 1992; Garland, 2001), and has a long history in cat-
egorizing offenders (see Pratt, 1997 for an historical perspective). However,
both O’Malley (2004a) and Garland (1997) have reminded us that such
grand theoretical claims and categorical concepts need to be supported
empirically and are often conditional in form. While Douglas (1992) for
example has noted the forensic function of risk in attributing blame and
exclusion, such attributions can change over time and people can move in
and out of such classifications (Pratt, 1997), not least as social and economic
policy changes and strategies of crime control develop. The ‘normalization’
of drug use is perhaps a case in point, with a combination of harm reduc-
tion, normalization and health strategies deployed alongside hard targeting
and more punitive measures for particular patterns of drug usage
(O’Malley, 2001, 2004a).
The actual operation of exclusionary and inclusionary processes, particu-
larly through risk-based crime control strategies, has attracted increased
empirical research (see, for example, Stenson and Sullivan, 2001). While
continuing to use these dichotomous terms, this article makes a contribu-
tion to that developing empirical work, and focuses on how they are
deployed within two contrasting approaches to public protection.
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