Post-welfarist risk managers? Risk, crime prevention and the responsibilization of community-based organizations
| Author | Tim Goddard |
| Published date | 01 August 2012 |
| Date | 01 August 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1362480611433432 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Theoretical Criminology
16(3) 347 –363
Post-welfarist risk managers?
© The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permission:
Risk, crime prevention
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1362480611433432
and the responsibilization
tcr.sagepub.com
of community-based
organizations
Tim Goddard
University of California, Irvine, USA
Abstract
Numerous scholars have observed that neo-liberal rationalities have resulted in the
replacement of interventionist State-run welfare initiatives with community-based risk
managing schemes in a process called responsibilization. These risk management policies
have become influential in the domain of crime prevention and in the shaping of the future
conduct of the ‘at-risk’ youth. This article details, ethnographically, the goals and activities
of 10 responsibilized community-based organizations and the conceptualization of ‘risk’
by practitioners from these organizations. The findings suggest that social abandonment
and surveillance-centered risk management schemes co-exist with welfarist notions. The
findings have implications about whether crime prevention is as post-welfarist as some
theorists maintain.
Keywords
community-based organizations, crime prevention, neoliberalism, responsibilization, risk
Introduction
Crime prevention has significantly expanded over the last two decades, leading O’Malley
and Hutchinson and others (e.g. Edwards and Hughes, 2005; Garland, 2001; Hughes,
Corresponding author:
Tim Goddard, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, 2340 Social
Ecology II, Irvine, CA 92697-7080, USA
Email: tgoddard@uci.edu
348
Theoretical Criminology 16(3)
2007; Tonry and Farrington, 1995) to assert that it is moving ‘from the sideline of crime
control to being among its most prominent domains’ (O’Malley and Hutchinson, 2007:
375). At the same time, not only has the ascendancy of risk re-structured contemporary
crime control and correctional methods, but risk has also reshaped crime prevention in
the direction of risk predictions and risk-based techniques (O’Malley and Hutchinson,
2007). Consistent with neo-liberal mentalities, other models of governance, such as
social management by welfare agencies, have now been replaced with individualized
risk management programs, cost–benefit analysis (O’Malley, 2010), and situational pre-
ventive schemes (Garland, 2001). Risk is now central to the ‘management of exclusion’
in post-welfare strategies of control (Rose, 2000: 332). In this article, I wish to interro-
gate the question: in the USA, how far has neo-liberal risk-based crime control triumphed
in the field of community-based crime prevention? I provide evidence to support the
development of a thesis that welfarist traditions survive the transition to late modern risk
management developments.
Youth-serving community-based organizations are a key feature in the neo-liberal
devolution of social crime prevention to the citizenry and the promotion of risk-based
models of governing crime (O’Malley, 2001). This formula of managing the ‘at-risk’
youth, however, tends to get less ‘on the ground’ empirical examination and critical
theoretical analysis within criminology and sociology. The limited examination, pre-
dominantly in the USA, may be partly due to the perspective that empirical analysis
should be left to policy-oriented scholars who assess program efficacy—a sort of ‘what-
works’ technicist analysis. We should be cautious in taking this view because it neglects
the connection of crime prevention to the wider political and social trends in crime con-
trol. Armstrong (2002), for example, found that non-profit organizations in the private
prison debate are ignored because they are assumed to be less harsh and rehabilitative in
nature, as opposed to being oriented to containment or a retributive ethic. Upon examina-
tion, however, the non-profit juvenile provider ‘tends to take on the qualities of the State
system that it was designed to replace’ (Armstrong, 2002: 362). Moreover, there is a
wide range of ‘governmental rationalities from neo-liberalism to neo-conservatism and
a wide range of governmental technologies – from the exclusionary to the inclusionary –
on which the contemporary governance of young people is now based’ (Muncie, 2006:
771, emphases in original). Thus, if we take seriously that crime prevention is a promi-
nent domain in crime control, we are incumbent to take seriously the organizations and
people that carry out its efforts, namely, youth-serving community-based organizations.
In the USA, community-based organizations (or CBOs) carry out not only delin-
quency and violence prevention, but perform state-sponsored interventions and re-entry
services for youth returning from detention. CBOs should be following the risk predic-
tion model where the social causes of delinquency are less important than addressing
more individually based ‘causes’ such as thinking errors, self-control problems, or poor
parenting practices. That is, CBOs have been brought in line with the prevailing risk
paradigm perspective, and more or less restrain some youth who are likely to pose a
problem to society by, for example, keeping them under increased surveillance. This
perspective is consistent with the view that risk-based crime prevention is considered an
emerging field for managing the ‘dangerous’ classes (Gray, 2009) in aid of the ‘Security
State’ (Hallsworth and Lea, 2011). It is part of the tough on crime turn, expanding State
Goddard
349
power (Crawford, 2006) alongside direct crime control through the police, courts, and
prisons (Garland, 2001).
In other crime control fields the modernist agenda, such as rehabilitation, gave way to
the post-welfarist, risk assessment, and management policies (Garland, 2001). Kemshall’s
(1998) study of risk in probation practice and policy, however, highlights that ‘there is a
difference between crime control developments that are “risk driven” in principle and
risk delivered on the ground’ (Kemshall, 2003: 98). Agents in the justice system resist
risk models or adapt them to their own ‘social work’ orientations. Further, the policy
trends of the ‘new penology’ (Feeley and Simon, 1992) do not always actualize at the
level of implementation in other domains as well. One example is the federal Weed &
Seed project in the USA, a multi-agency partnership whose aims are targeted suppres-
sion, violence prevention, and neighborhood restoration (Miller, 2001a). In a similar
way, Lynch’s (1998) ethnographic study of probation agents—also investigating the
operation of the ‘new penology’ paradigm at the level of implementation—found risk
management to operate more at the level of policy and leadership, but less so at the level
of implementation. O’Malley (2001, 2010) stresses that the nature of risk and the result-
ing programs of neo-liberalism are capable of, and not resistant to, deviation and modi-
fication. They are both ‘unstable, unfinished, multivalent, and always available to
change’ (O’Malley, 2001: 90). For example, the neo-liberal governance of illicit drugs
through harm minimization is ‘rejected as a strategic model, precisely because of the
“amorality” and “tolerance” projected by this particular form of risk-based response’
(O’Malley, 2001: 93). With respect to crime risk factors, the social psychological lists of
such things as ‘poor social skills’, ‘poor cognitive skills’, and the community-level risk
factors are all seemingly identical to the lists of causes of crime under the welfare state.
Recent scholarship shows that the neo-liberal framework may function as a creative
force rather than simply a negative consequence of marketization (Goddard and Myers,
2011). Though neo-liberal risk management has emerged as a vehicle for crime control,
the outcomes of such offloading are not written in stone. Local communities may under-
mine the ideologically driven outcomes of neo-liberal governance—including the eco-
nomic exclusion, the abrogation of state supports, and the advent of mass incarceration—in
support of issues of economic inequality, restorative peacemaking, and justice reinvest-
ment (a strategy to reduce the use of incarceration and divert the savings to improve the
circumstances of communities).1
In this article, I critically consider whether risk governance has superseded welfare
schemes in the context of crime prevention, as carried out via CBOs. This article is based
on my study of front-line CBOs who carry out risk-based interventions as part of a
broader community crime prevention initiative. I examine their goals, activities, and
attitudes with respect to social abandonment, the dismantling of the welfare state and the
ubiquity of risk management schemes in the field of youth justice. I draw from ethno-
graphic fieldwork conducted in an urban city in Southern California, USA, at 10 CBOs
and one multi-agency community partnership—all of which have the goal of preventing
violence and delinquency of ‘at-risk’ youth.
Notably, ‘at-risk’ youth are considered particularly vulnerable to committing more
serious offending, joining a gang, being victimized, and are highly monitored by the
criminal justice system and law enforcement. What is more, in the urban centers of
350
Theoretical Criminology 16(3)
Los Angeles County, this cohort of ‘at-risk’ youth are comprised mostly of young men
and older boys of color (Black and Latino) who experience material deprivation. Thus,
the CBOs’ choices...
To continue reading
Request your trial