I

1.1' 111'11111

J. (1996) 'Invcllting "Jkelillc": tile J;lllill~ Iwhinci fir the British CCOllOIllY
twM~~,=
~
' r;o'lll/o!llirlfiliI!1I!Rcl'I('I(',XLlX('I):TlI 7rj7,
- , 12 Insecurity and the dream. of
E., Weersink, A. aile! SWill!tOII, C, (200!) j\grintitu]'(' <lIHIISO II(JUO', 1';)1111
26: 35-48,
targeted governance
Warner, M. (cd,) (1997) (,()}lu:\{' Illil'/'i/filiollrll "l lill.lIl/n.\ IIlId MIIIIIIW'III('lII. I.OIl<iol1:
International Thomson Business Press,
D. and Gertler, IV!. (20(11) 'Globalizatio1l and ,'Collollli.- J'('slnl('tlllitig ill Ontario:
Hum industrial heartland to Flllilnilig SllIlhi'I', :) 7':) Y)2,
nand Roos, D. (I 99()) 'l7tf Mmliil/(' Ihal (/lIl11f1,/'t! IiiI' 1IIIItd, New York:

J BoSloll (rd,) 1111'

Slate Under
I ()<)7) 'Colltracl, slatus ill1<1
("( Is) '[lie ,Nfli' CO!ltmrllllliJJIII,
(:2002) 'Th" I](,W ('()lllractualisllI
:W(1) G'l n
, in (;, Dmis, g, A.
Maunill;1Il Education,
wilh t(Job burrowed or ildapted li'oill l'(nlt'ault"
i1l1<1 individuali/,cd
essay and IiUlll tile rich of lh!'orelical ,lIlei

arc
.-\hstracts. lists
FOllcalllt appears ,lS ,I keyword, All(l influelltial
scliolar.s who are uol hmC<luidiall llcvntlwiess
field iJas i)eel] trallsi()l'l11cd by the spread of 'gOV(,[,lllllCllt<llity' allaivsis, .\ Ilotahh­
examplc is Davie! G,n-bnd's nl(, (,',,[I{1II: 0/ COIi/rol, arguably tiIe Illost illthwlltiai
recelll liIeoretical ol'C!yicw of lTillliliai juslice issues (C;,lrbnd :lOOI), which
mallY or tliC iusights of studies or
policing, PlIllisillllCllt, ,1IIeI
(TIIIlC hy I'burauldiall criminulogy illto <l s),lltlwsis witll

WitI'

,Ollie illroads ill Ilw Ullited Stales.

VVhy shuuld Ihi, Ix (II' interest to scholars

Crimillology is, argllahly, the leasl )al or the ,()ciai Scl('l}('CS. There ;IIT
studies of dlill'ts to comclillillt' policiug
orgaJlized crime, thc sl11I1ggling ()f mignlllts, allci issues in illicit drug and arms
controL Buttlic ('lllcrgcllcc of I1CW, 'tl'endy' ,lrCilS or cmpiric;li ami usually vcry
ITsc;Jl'cli lias lIot been accompauicd by allY ('()lIn'ti\'('
<tlld llIissioll oj' crilllillology. . \s it malleI'
alld ~wcl\rity have bccn
to tile ;;talC's lIlachill(,],\' (II'
Evell 111 « milt rics wit 11 strong tradit ions
or academic
fUllded. amI to SOIl1(" rt'scarch
IJUt ('VCll whole research iustillltn" So (1S

il1clllde ;111 article ahollt !'IT''llt dcwloplllCllls

'nilllillulog-y', a l('llll J'('dOit'llt or Durklwimiall slalist scir'Il(T:'
 LJ'1 J\'U1rl(tJW ValVerrle and iHu:/Wfl and 23:)

Statist no Illore? Redefining policing as governance,

stueiy of the provision of security or the maintcnance and governanee of
not governIllent
rather than the study of one slate institution. That the provision amI guaran­
of ordel; including basic physical security, is it function thaI can and is
l'lw statist tradition of in the 1970<; by th(' carried out by a whole host of actors and imtitutiolls, with the modern
that was located ill sociology merely one of these, is now a generally accepted insight. An indi­
as much as in research institu tes, and which drew most cator of the success of the pr~ject to redeline policing in a non-statist manner is
of its theoretical and from critical socioloe:ical studies the fact that as tlte Law Commission of Canada {()fused researcb resources and
COli dueled on purely academic lines, without policy attention 011 the issue or security, it organised a major international
A foremost leader in this crilical turn, conference ill l'ebruary of 2003, in Montreal, whose co-sponsors included two
as the study of sodal control - security linns, as well as poliee and gOVfl'mnent representatives. If
the causes of crime wilh a view to criminals even a national 'Law COllllllissioll' has come 10 think of
clisorder. 2 Nevertheless, despite its oppositional _ critical terms, Foucauldian academics can be
on the state albeit to denounce it. The statist has indeed won out over 'goverulllellt' and 'state' in at least one Ildd
to be the intellectual work,

1987}_ of the state in and by researchers working 011 policillg aud

These studies or the not
we:re
contmgcnt icatllfe made crnm 1I0logy opcn to the
sillce one of the: COllcerns of early English-Ianguagt> govcrnm
was precisely to de-centre state governance and to encourage a mapping of actu­
ally existing relation~ that is faitllliJI to new, hybrid developments in govemance.
The 'I(mmto Centre of Criminology had been a crucial player ill the 'private
research programme, and it is, in our view, not coincidental that this
Ccfllre also became, during lhe 1990" a signilicant site for the 'translation' into
research COIICf~rns or the 'gov(~rnl1lentality' texts
outside of criminoloe:v. in the UK and Australia. In 1992, when govem­
a very influential article by Nikolas Rosl" amI
argued that H:)lJcault's work can
gOlJenzalU:e networks as they actually mapping the networks of the
power that is not identified with state apparatuses. A few
INllucal theorist:; had enthused about 'civil society' as a new
but governmentality work did not take sides in the
state versus civil society debate, encouraging instl"ad an
whicb governance relations could be documented without
containers of political science ('the state'; 'civil , 'the
helped resemchers concerned with security and policing to pay theoretical attt'll­
lion to phenomena such as the llcoliberal managerial moves by which some
police forces were encouraged or torced to engage in 'partnerships' with
has been most evident in the inclusion or private, lor-profit institutiolls
within the ambit or criminolo!lical research. ,some work has also been done.
mostly at the urban the relations between state bodies alld non-
groups 111 the delivery of security ,md safety services
Crawf(mi IDlJ7)_ contrasl, much less has been done to exnlore a
different dimension of the extra-state governancc of
nationa.l dimensions of order maintenance. A lc-w
money laundering are regarded, withont much
belonging withill the 'glob;l!'. At present, these though important in law
enforcement have it relatively low profile ill tbeoretical and critical studies
Nevertheless, tlte illtellectual reWJlution discussed above
rather than a governl11f'nt
that research attention will f()e1lS 011
activities that cross
has recently come to th(' lore as
research ill Canada, rather belatedly given Canada's
in tbis partieular dimension of inleruatiollal order
study of peacekeeping, which will necessarily focus Oil military
and Oll NCO activity rather thall 011 the public police, will sooncr or
later help to bridge the r,lther outdated barriers separating criminology from
sciclIce and international law - boundaries that have thus tar kept tlH'
of crime and law enforcemellt artificially separate /i'om tilt' stwJv of war
and the study of human rights.
Thus, a potential space for research and thought has been opened up by the
litct that stuciies or policing ami security that are inlluenced by hmcauldiall work
011 goveruance are no longer tethered 10 the nation-state eveu when their partic­

private stector actors and with com111U11ity groups and to market their services to ular locus is a national police force or a national criminal jllstice programme_
and other govcrtnncnts. Even ill the case of scholarship which does not explicitly theorize extra-slate
In pan under the inlluence or stuclies of govemance and govermnentality, the rebt iOlls or c1irnensiolls or security work, findings fi'Oln the literature on the
study of 'policing' was recldillccI in thc 1990, in (luite a radical manner: as the goverllallce of security, we would ;lrglle, can still be very relevant to readers of
236 A1ariana Valverde and Michael
this anthology interested in understanding the current trallsitmnatiollS of the
processes by which non-state and state organizations attemnt to achieve and to
security, in whatever context.
It is worth noting that if governmentality studies helped many
to stop taking the boundaries of the state and of 'law' for granted,
us to study governance relations across the conventional boundaries
from private, state from economy, and state from community, this
shift to de-centre the state had a different character from the de-centring of 'the
state' cflected (or advocated) in the work of many 'globalization' theorists. While
',,1
Foucault's work did not directly address 'the global' (not surprisingly, since
during Foucault's lifetime terms such as 'international', 'imperialist', and so on
were still the currency of both politics and theory), it would be quite inconsistent
with Foucault's approach to nee from the frying pan of statism only to
fall into the fire of generalizations about globalizatiOl
The Foucault -innuenced research on recent shifts in the work of providing
and guaranteeing basic physical security and cnforcing laws and regulations does
not provide any evidence to back up any general thesis about the coming of
'globalization'. III the field of political economy, some excellent work has
undercut the grand claims made both by the neoliheral riQ'ht and the left about
the relentless march of a globalization regarded as
and smooth socioeconomic homogenization (for example, Hirst
1999). In keeping with Hirst and Thompson's realistic and
nuanced analysis of how th{' complexities of economic governance
the beginning of the twenty-first century belie any generalities about the
we too would like to highlight the persistently, unfashionably non-global character
of much policing, even of supposedly inlemaliollal policing.:!
A key but little-known fact regarding international policing is that despite the
changes in cross-national governance structures in spheres from commerce to
illegal drugs to foreign policy, the number of international covenants or agree­
ments conferring international powers on police is cxactlv zero. There is much
rhetoric about information sharing, and possibly a
information sharing (the character and extent of which is
the public, or even to researchers). But this information sharing
enhance the action of nationally based police forces (Gill 1998; Sheptycki 1998).
Any form of inter-country police cooperation must be done in accordance with
the domestic laws of each of the states, and is limited by the fact that interna­
tional organizations of which Interpol is one of the very few examples+ are
not, cOlllrary to some crime-novd representations, international bodies linking
states or existing above states, but rather are professional organizations, compa­
rable to international organizations of academics. Police cooperate only by
exchanging information as they see fit. And, most importantly, the flow of tbis
information is such as to reinforce rathcr than threaten state-based police
dictions. The information, we stress, is lIOt to another
but rather to other police forces, who thell use it to enforce national
1989; Walker 2000; Deflem 2000). And as revelations arising
Insecurity and Im;lic1ed gOMl'llIllICe 237
Ii'om tbe US inquiry into the intelligence failures surrounding September
~ suggest, sometimes the information flowing from one police force in one region
I
J
to one particular agency, which jealously guards it, rather than to 'the
~ state' as a whole. Thus, while there are developments in international law
1 cnforcement that one could cite if one wanted to write about the globalization of
J policing, nevertheless, dose attention needs to be paid to the shape of actual
networks of power and knowledge. Occasional, discretionary collaboration
j between different national police (orces example, ill the pursuit of users of
Internet child pornography) should not be mistaken for 'globalization'. States
and local municipalities remain the key venues lor, and jurisdictions of, law
'1I enforcement, even when law enforcement processes are qualitatively different in
'.
.1 that they crucially involve 'colUmunity' agencies, for-profit security firms and
other nOll-state actors.
It is not necessarily an exercise ill intellectual imperialism to argue that the
from studies of new tecllilologies (including political technologies) of
used at the urban level may be of use to scholars analysin
programmes beyond the or traditional urban-focused
programmes that, while still centrally relying Oil state actors and resources,
nevertheless exceed the physical boundaries of the state, for example, interna­
tional peacekeeping operations. At a higher level of abstraction, we would <ll'gue
that there is no good reaSOll, either intellectual or political, for continuing to
maintain the old boundaries that keep 'crime' that old Durkheimian statist
object- separate from such phenomenologically similar entities as 'human rights
violations', 'tcrrorism', 'smuggling' and 'war'. Just to give olle example, 'war' is
not what is used to be: while during the Cold War it was often thought that the
end of the Cold War would mean a drying up of the political and military roots
of Third World wars, wars have in recent yem's multiplied rather than decreased.
And while the 'new wars' 'dissolve conventional distinctions between 'people',
'army', and 'government" (Duffield 2001: 136), so too recent develomnents in the
US-led 'war on terrorism' also blur the lines formerly separating
crime from 'terrorism' and from (statist) war.
What this has meant for international relations and for theories of war is
explored by others; for our purposes, what is important is to reHeet on the
of the fact that the line separating political from non-political
seems thinner than evel; in a wide variety of dinerent
in 'development' work constantly remind us, today's 'human­
itarian' crises arc generally complex events with multiple dimensions: the
situations that have arisen in places such as the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and
the COIlQ'O canuot be slotted neatly iIlto anyone of the
cultural conflict; economic
researchers - and for that matter, policy-makers are now focusing
not so much on particular crimes that need detection and apprehension, but
rather on the overall, future-oriented process of ensuring security, tl1e insights of
of recent trends in the governance of (urban) security could thus be of use
to those concerned with other dimensions and other venues of order maintenance

238 Mariana Valverde and MidUlel
and seulrity provisioll. Or, put it 11I0re academically,
to
science could begin to undo or at least questiolJ the
work or the past decades, work which has made it c1illicult to remember that in
the end, both enterprises are fundamentally ('oncerued with the Hobbesian
problematic or insecurity. With Hobbes, we could say that neilher crime nor war,
these days:
comisteth of BatteH only, or the act of fighting: but ill a tract of time,
wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known: and therefore
the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of Wane [and lack of
salety]; as it is in the nature of the Weather. For as the nature of Foule
weather Iyeth not in a showre or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of
many dayes together: So the nature or War [and crime] ronsistelh not in
actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time
there is no assurance to the contrary.
19GB:
If the :>tucly of policing- one of the key suhfidds for the international
Anglophone criminological research programme that enwrged during the 1970s
as the study or criminal justice institutions carne to overshadow classical questiOi
ahout 'the criminal' and 'criminality' found in governmentality a key theoret­
ical re~ource to help explain what many saw as the k(~y empirical issue of the
time (namely, the growing intcrpenetration of private and puhlic security
personnel and resources), so too theoretical resources loosely linked to
or more accurately to some of his collaborators, were also important in the theo­
retical transformation of the study of the other keystone of current
criminoJof,,>1cal thought:
FroID. discipline to risk: the new penology
The literature on 'the new penology', one of the key theoretical innovations in
criminology or the past fifteen or so years, relied on some l:'oucauldian resources
can include under that label the work of Francois Ewald and Robert
to analyse some important recent changes in the way tbat authorities
govern offenders and deliver state punishment. While the sort of modern
penalty associated with the nineteenth-century penitentiary focused 011 the
otfeneler as a soul or as it psyche, aiming to normalize if not the individual at
least the population of offenders, in the last third of the twentieth century,
neoliheral and managerial moves to displace therapy, to cut back state
and to impose new knowledges more amenable to performance assessment,
fOund the new logic of 'risk' more useful than the oleler, more ambitious and
totalizing logic of 'discipline.' The psyche of the offender; long the key objcct of
.
penological discourse and practice, came to be if not reDlaced at least
___ ~, ___ ... , _ _ _ _...,,,,'_ NoII •• \Wn#iIII\IiML.~~fa~i1w'ii~ ~_ fSZ :iIl:!&llIJI£,Jt1M.W~IIII'iW3!"1ft! wm'"l:II
illsecUli(v (Ind 239
psychotherapy) have been ill many places replaced by tools that to a large extent
can govern subpopulatiollS without gowming through the persoll or seeking to
the souLs Low-level correctional ollicers can rherk off itellls 011 a risk assess­
ment scale and generate an auditable asseSSllIt'llt that can be quickly used to move
oflcnclers into one or another f;lcility or programme. Psychiatric and social work
professional discretionary judgement is thus sidelined, in murh penal Dractiee, ill
ways that paraUeI what has happened ill llIany other
The literature on governing penal issues ,lIlel penal populations through risk
could be of use to anyone studying con temporal), developments in global serurity
along a number of different dimensions. The sophisticated literaturt' Oil governing
criminality through risk has thus lar remained, to our knowledgf, lIllcited anel
unused by those examining global security (for example, DufTicld 200 I), and even
sdlOlars studying immigration law and policy. Airport scret'lling, fiJI'
(both that done by state immigration and customs oflicials and that done by secu­
rity guards), foUows the same 'Iisk profiling' logic that has become ubiquitous in
correctional and police settings, but we are not aware of studies of airport security
or other international processes that usc the illsights of the Ilt'w penology.
With the aim of facilitating analytic experimentation and the borrowing of
analytical t061s across disciplinary and field boundaries, leI liS iJere provide a
brief overview of the key findings of the literature on penalit)' and risk, togetlwr
with very sketchy suggestions on how they might be useful in other colltexts. In .
the last section of the chapter we will then develop our OWII theoretical argu­
ment about the way ill which risk management is part of a wider shift ill
governance that we call 'targeted governance'. There, we will make some tenta­
tive suggestions about the potential uses, for scholars of the global, not only of
the 'risk' literature arising out of criminology hut also of other studies that
the thesis that our particular present is dominated by a utopian gover­
lIallce dream it 'smart" specific, side-ellects-free, informatioll-dri\'en utopia of
govefllancc that in policing circles takes the form of 'intclligcnce-Ied policing'
and in medical circles is known as 'evidence-based medicine '.
But fIrst, Ict us look at the new penology and the lise of 'risk lllanagement'. Sinct'
the late f 980s, resC<1.rehers documenting developments in penal policy and
lJave noted it trend away fium llillcteenth-centlll), cOllcerns to normalize deviants that
OI;ginally gave rise to nimil1ol06'Y- The harsh regimes of early penitentiaries and the
more bencvolent regimes of mid-twentieth celltllly welfurist rehabilitation programmt's
diverged sharply in political orientation: but thfy shared a eommon epistelllolog), This
was the fimdamcntal oppositioll hetweell 'normal' and 'dc\'i.mt', most
explored by l'oucmtlt ill his studies on prisons and on sexuality, and the cOllsequcnt
belief that at least for rcfi"lrmable 'deviants', tlH' state and VcU;OUS expert bodies should
devote resources to normalizing them, reJllrllling their habits, and rehabilitatinOl their
souls.
Whether they wcre harshly disciplined ill workhouses and asylums, or
.-...--..4-""
reformed in welfarisl institutions, the ill, the i~IJOrallt, the unlortu­
"'-. rl ,1."_ J ___ .
240 lvlarialla Valverde aud lvlidllle! A1oj}(ls Insecurity and targeted governance 24 I

the diagnostic analysis Rose 1990, 1996; Poovey 199B) and Initially, risk management was identified with bureaucratic techniques for identi­
the related information systems, from censuses to epidemiological statistics, in fying and isolating problem populations (for example, offenders with a high risk
which individual-level data were centrally collected so that the data, as of recidivism, as determined by scales derived fi'Ol11 previous data).
tables of numbers and as statistics. were disseminated to helD rationalize the However, later contributions to the literature on risk showed that risk techniques
are not tied to any particular way gaze (bureaucratic versus clinical, impersonal
versus individualized), or to any particular political project. Social insurance and
viduals and improving universal health coverage, for example, are well-known ways of using risk tcch­
the rise of neoliberal and neoconservative ~r~;~~'o to spread risks among the whole population, thus achieving a
instance by having the private sector or . democratic effect. This usc of risk has the opposite political
with the state 'steering but not , new ways of or to segre-
deviant populations emerged. Within the correctional
tion, parole -,- the biggest trend of the past thirty years has undoubtedly been the IS

rise of risk measurement and risk As David Garland puts it,

offenders, 'rather than clients in need of support, are seen as risks that must be
managed. Instead of emphasizing rehabilitative methods that meet the 'n eeds' as 'risks'
offender's needs, the system emphasizes effective controls that minimize costs matler, in a lleoliberal are risks to .~~~.~~ ..
h.

and maximize' security' (2001: 175).
What came to be called 'the new penology' was a reflection on the profoulld
changes involved in shifting away fi-om discipline to risk. Discipline (and rehabili­
tation) governs individuals individually while simultaneously forming and
normalizing populations. Risk management, by contrast, breaks the individual
up into a set of measurable risk factors. This of course is not unique to criminal
justice: in health care too, patients being diagnostically examined by a clinician
using old fashioned clinical judgement appear to have given way to bundles of
test results. Each test generates, automatically, a particular risk profile, deter­
mined by existillg data. Clinical judgement the original prototype of
the individualizing gaze of the disciplines, to Nmcault now consists
of iuxt<lf)osing- and synthesizing the risk profiles generated by different
soclolmnst of medicine Robert Castel:
The new dissolve the notIon 01 a or a concrete
and put in its place a of the factors of risk ... The
essential component of the iutervention no takes the form of the
direct face-to-face relationship between the carer and the cared ... It comes
instead to reside in the establishing of flows of population based on th",
collation of a range of abstract £actors deemed liable to produce risk in
general.
(Castel 1991: 281)
to the respectable; but it is possible to redefine oeoole's own risks
eracy, alcohol dependence, hunger)
to 'society', to capitalism, or to global security, and thus as requiring attention
and perhaps even state funding. Social services to homeless youth or to released
convicts are now rationalized, in Canada at any rate, a<; helping vulnerable
populations to learn to monitor and manage their risks, thus protecting 'society'
from crimillal and from fiscal dangers.
There arc a lIurnber of new initiatives ill and around criminal justice that
show the amazing flexibility of risk talk and risk-measurement tools. On the
more coercive side, we have the rise of 'NIegan's laws' sex-oilender community
notification statutes (Levi 2000). These begin by classifying sex oflenders into
different risk groups and it is a given of risk analysis, here as elsewhere, that
there is no such thillg as zero risk, only high or low risk and then communi­
cating the presence of high-risk released offenders to 'the community', so that
the community can protect itself This is a good example of risk illfl)l'mation
being used to heighten social exclusion, in contrast to the ways in which welfarist
programmes use risk information to direct resources for prrventioll and
inclusion purposes.1i
The sex-ofTf:ndf:r notification statutes
articulate risk information te(:IUlologles
eral discourses of risk
infi)nnation about oflenders was by the state in certain coun­
or information about criminal risks is still
the state, with community and
much smaller role than in the common-law world). The state
mation and the state acted. But ill the neoliberal
COl1nnon-law neoliberru,m",... rcP which relies on local authorities and sub-state
powers more than is the case in many more centralized states, state bodies such
as the police are not given the monopoly over the task of (l('tually securinl!" the
 242 A1arialla Valverde and _Midtael Iv[0/)(1.1
commuuity (~ven when they have a monopoly on the process of gelJ(~ratillg the
risk information (Levi Ericson and Haggerty 1997). Communities (an amor­
pbOlJS term that often amounts to businesses and/or traditional families) are
regarded as having the duty and the right to use the Ilovernment-Dwvicled risk
infor-mation to take their own risk
The same goes j[)r private homeowners, who are constantly addressed by
authorities (including insurance companies as well as the police) with the
Hobbesian discourse of etemal homeowner vigilance, anel enjoined to become
active providers of their own security.7 This reCOllligllration of the risk of crime
is ill keeping with the neoliberal reconfiguration of medical risks: we go to
to get our risk assessment, hut we are then enjoined to take up exercise,
cat certain foods, and so on, so as to act upon our own risk factors. Similarly, the
welfarist recipient of universal old-age insurance has given way to the enter-
holder of individual pension plans, an individual who carefully scans the
finallCial pages and chooses his or her own way of balancing the risks illherent in
stock-market investment against the risks of all old age dependent only on
scaled back state provisions.
Along similar lines, we have the proliferation of crime prevention and urban
initiatives that eucourage citizens to know, monitor, and manage everyday
risks to their OWl! safety and that of their neighbourhoods. These initiatives are
llO means limited to wealthy gated communities; many poorer
in the Third World particularly, have developed innovative ways to
manage risks to their safety with minimal involvement from the often-discredited
and sometimes downright hostile public police (see, [or example, Brogden and
1993).
Given these widespread trends, it is not surprising that receut research high-
the growing use of 'risk profiling' within police and the ways in
which risk information, rather than being hoarded by
constantly transferred out, to some extent to communities but mainly to
insurance companies, employers, and other organizatiollS that use this
risk information for their own purposes. Ericson and Haggerty's
inl1uential alld voluminous study of police work, which shows that most
tiITle is spent not lighting criITle but rather gathering and communicating risk
shows that the well-publicized 101li(' of racial orofilinlZ is onlv one of
a wide range of risk comll1unication
i'11r ('''~)1nnIF the KeMP has a Security Fraud lnfclrluation Centre that risk-
profiles securities transactions. The centre's mandate is 'to maintain 11
national repository of criminal intelligence information on fraudulent and
activities in the security field and disseminate information to security
commissions across Canada'.
(Ericson and 1997: 218)
l'hc growing tendency to use risk information [(JrIl1ats
'risk assessment scalf'S' used ill child Drotection work to COIlII11I111ity
and 243
safety audits to addiction counselling) in order to govern security and
risk fiKtors - rather than directly through persolls !la,> been closely
linked, in the criminal justice Geld, to the growing inl1l1ence auel prestige of
private security tools and cOllcerns. The Canadian ivIounted Poliee did not
come up with the idea of risk-profiling securities, obviously, and neither
the tools with which to do Ihis: the financial industry did.
private-sector agf'uts concerned mOrf' to prevent ernployee /i-ami and thell than
offenders to justice have devised ,( number of inllovative surveillance
techniques - not only the well-known high-tech inllovations of the modern
such as tracking employees' computer use or requiring computerized
cards to enter buildings, hut also a welter of low-tech ad hoc solutions,
such as placing the reception desk ill a location designed to maximize 'natural
surveillance' of activities resulting in a loss of profit, fi-om taking too many
,-"",-,ottcp breaks to pilfering office supplies. These measures to manage and mini­
mize risks to corporations have been adapted for use in public spaces,
police and partly by the Gist-growing industry or crime
environmental design (CPTED) consultants_
That tlle private sector would lead the way in risk technologies or security is
not surprising. For the private sector the goal was, and is, to minimize risks and
goillg after wrongdoers is often lIOt it rational goal, either iinam:ially or
n-om the DoiHt of view of orQanization morale. Risks are often best minimized
acting on the ellvirOlll11Cnt so as to lower the
This impersonal way of
treats everyone as a rational actor; it is uninterested in drawing lines
the normal hun the deviant, the criminal from the honest worker_
And yet, the focus on the private-enterprise origins and llses of much infor­
mation technology and risk management technology should not be allowed to
obscure the still not outdated old Marxist insights about the coercive apparatus
of the state. rvlucb of the technology currently used in both public policing and
private sector sUlveillancf' originated in military research, And of course, the
Internet itsell~ while hailed as a great neoliberal space of consumer and intellec­
tual freedom, was originally developed by the American military.
who see the Internet as a great space of ji-eedom might do well to reneet 011
it is that American email addresses exist in and help to constitute a virtual inlpe­
rial space, ill which the relevant divisions are merely those bf'tween , 'COIll',
'edu' and 'org', functioning like so Illany independent states 'ca', 'uk', 'au', 'f1-'
and so on.) Apart ii-om the American military-industrial complex '$ unique ability
to actually realize, in practice, dreams of governance that other
could nevcr render technical, olle could lIote that tbe use of CCTV cameras ill
the UK is historically rooted in the British Army's expcril1lcnts with electronic
and city planning ill Bellast (Haggerty amI Ericsoll 200 I:
The emergence of wilat is known as 'database policiug', where olTicers
search not persons or vehicles but databases Oil the basis of certain risk profiles
or specific information, is but one additional exanwie or the tridde-clown eilt'ct
or militarv technology 011 daily police
 ~44 Manana Valverde
despite the undeniable deep roots of policing rationalities and
technologies in both military and corporate needs and concerns, the most recent
literature on the policing of risks also reminds us that risk management is a prag­
matic and highly mobile affair. Risk techniques developed by state security
systems or by corporations can, at least theoretically, be used in other contexts
with different eflects. The surveillance camera that maximizes the corporation's
security by deterring employees as a group from pilfering tools from the store­
room can also be used to enhance women employees' safety by identifying a
In general, governmentality writers try to avoid the paranoid style of
writing and the conspiracy theories of causation that pervaded earlier schools of
critical criminology. Although some of them sometimes fall back into the 'Big
Brother is watching' school of sociology, probably due to the persistent drag of
the 'social control' paradigm, nevertheless, much governmentality work on secu­
demonstrates the flexibility and unpredictability of technologies of
surveillance and risk management. For example: one recellt study by Foucault­
influenced criminologists documents the invention of gadgets sold over the
Internet allowing American parents to drug-test their own children, gadgets
marketed as helping white suburban nuclear families to stay out of state sight.
Instead of decrying the relentless march of state control into the heart of the
however, the study shows that the same lirms that make the devices
allowing parents to unknowingly test their own children for illicit drug use also
market equally effective gadgets that drug users can buy to fool their parent~' or
their employers' drug-screening efforts (Moore and Haggerty
Indeed, one of the recurring themes of governmentality studies of crime and
security is that there is no one-to-one, frxed relationship between particular
ical projects and sets of governance tools or techniques. Statistics aren't
'the state's facts' even if that is their empirical origin. And surveillance cameras
outside a women's shelter have a different political effectivity than the
same cameras placed outside a government building. In keeping with Foucault's
own radical refusal of grand narrative of Brother oppression, future work in
the area of security technologies and rationalities is likely to emphasize the flexi­
and unpredictability of the eflccts of governing through risk. Political
determinism is as problematic, from a Foucauldian perspective, as
determinism.
Risk security techniques are not uniquely linked to ncoliberal capitalism or to
any other macroeconomic or political project since poor neighbourhoods taking
autonomous measures to protect themselves, or women fearing abusive
husbands, can and do use risk technologies as well as corporations. It is al1
inescapable conclusion that the military and corporations have been the most
inventive and prolific providers of ncw risk techniques, and that these techniques
are still generally used to protect profits and to measure and enhance state secu-
But a governmentality analysis would suggest that it is important to try to
document alternative, creative uses of risk techniques not to romanticizc 'resis­
tance', but simply to show that governance is often more heterogeneous and
InfPi'lJrJni and 245
or by dctermllll1lg the actual historical 'origin' of this or that technology.
Innovations in governance are usually to be found in the unheralded Ii'out lines,
not among lheorist$. The criminology of social control tended to see every inno­
vation in policing or punishment as another ruse of power, another instance of
'net widening', yet more filel for the runaway train of social control. l'Ollcauldian
studies, by contrast, try to walk a fine line, on the one hand acknowledging the
circuits of 'big power,' and 011 the other hand being attentive to the creativity,
fluidity and dynamism of governance on the
Targeted governance
Governing security and safety through risk techniques that identify and evaluate
the presence and the magnitude of risk factors in people, spaces, and activities is
connected to - and is sometimes just a part of a very generalized way of
governing that has been called 'targeted governance' (Valverde 2003).
One way of visualizing the shift towards targeted governance is to reflect on
what 'smart drugs', smart bombs, and targeted sodal programmes have in
common. In all three cases, the ideal of targeting governance effectively and "<
arises out of a general disenchantment with more universalistic or '
totalizing strategies. Smart drugs zero in on a very specific process a particular
neuron receptor site on the brain, for instance and seek to llse data from seien­
tifrc studies to act upon a single process (for example, raising the serotoniu levels
in the brain), rather than attempting to cure a (whole) person of a (whole) disease
such as depression. Smart bombs, 011 their part, are supposed to once more use
expert knowledge (intelligence data, in this case) to isolate a target and act upon
that with a minimum of collateral damage.
In the sphere of the social, many universal social programmes have been
replaced by 'targeted' programmes, often by deploying the s<une justifications
and rationales used to promote 'smart drugs'. Popular as well as expert neolib­
eral discourses in the era of Thatcher and Reagan managed to convince large
!lumbers of people that the collateral damage or the side dfects of welfare -­
dependency on the state, mainly were so severe as to justify cuts that in many
cases brought back conditions, such as large-scale homelessness, not seen in
many cities since the Great Depression. Once more, the idea of 'targeting'
programmes was linked to the idea of dEcient, apolitical, knowledge-driven,
'evidence-based' policy. Studies would show who really needed this or that
programme; the lazy welfare bum would be dillcrentiated from the deselving
poor; the middle class would no longer benefrt from child benefits and otber
universal programmes developed during the 1950s and 19GOs. The dream. of
knowledge-driven targeted governance was, in this sphere as in many medical
contexts, linked to a disappointment with or outright rejection of more totalizing
dreams of governance that had come to be seen as hubristic and dysfunctional.
The policing freld shows the same kind of transformation. The Peelian idea of
policing as universal sUlveillance and total security through prevention came to
 U6 Mariana Valverde and Midtael Mopa\
covering a whole city equally were never totally
IlImized, with more and more resources devoted to
is not synonymous with racial profiling racial prollllllg IS
merely one, not very representative, lorm of targrted policing. Policing ha~ been
and remains targeted along several diflerellt axes: (I) the targeting of problem
,\j/aces; 2) the targeting of problem /JopulatioTLr; and (3) the targeting of particularly
risky activities. Patrols around public housing projects exemplify the first; racial
profiling is a notorious example of the second strategy; and airport security is a
current example of the third strategy for the targeting of security resources.
'rargeted governance (in its contemporary neoliberal form at any rate) is thor­
oughly pessimistic insofar as it arises out of a widely shared feeling that the
totalizing transformations by the pioneers of the welf::1re state were not
expensive but also inherently ill-advised. 9 We cannot cure .
cure sCl11zophrenia, we are now told, and the state cannot provide total
for the citizenry: people have to be taught to manage their own risks, with the
help of information Ii'om state and expert bodies and perhaps some,
material resources. And the provision of resources is usually made contingent on
submitting oneself or onc's organization to a lifetime of monitoring, evaluation,
auditing, and assessment (Power 1994). The welfare-era idea that one could actu­
ally cure both medical and social conditions, abolish poverty or abolish
insecurity, once and for all, is dismissed as utopian.
But targeted governance is simultaneously highly optimistic in believing that
good information can and will be collected to enable managers of all types to
their ore:anization's resources efficiently and with maximum benefit. The
that is targeted governance is
evident in self-help books Oil financial success: armed with the
information and with a positive attitude, anyone can ride the waves of market­
place or personal misfortunes and emerge happy, healthy, and successful. But
even in genres less prone to bootstrapisrn, such as expert writing on security, one
sees a lingering utopian optimism about total information providing total secu­
rity coexisting with a neoliberal fear of governing too much. Targeted policing,
for example, is closely intertwined with what is known as 'intelligence-led'
policing, a project that has an implicit utopia of total security underwriting it
while in the medical field, targeted interventiollS and smart drugs are closely
intertwined with what is known as 'evidence-based medicine'. In medicine too,
the modesty that speaks about lifelong management of one's own
able but manageable health risks coexists with the
therapies for everything, a governance
mapping of the human genome, with its attendant myth of ultimate IJIUIU1'\I~d'
knowledge, and by the increasingly sophisticated techniques lor seeing or at
lC'ast visualizing, through mediating technologies ~ the biochemical secrets of
every little neurone.
It may be that the contradictory dream of information-driven targeted gover­
nance a dream which begi1ls with neoliberal modesty but is dialectically
insecurity and targeted governance 247
targeting everything and thus
at least in part to the international arena,
of disarmament pr()jects. The CND-era ideal of
which assumed that there were only two
and that once those two sides saw reason and engagl"d in a dialogue to disarm,
the world's s('curity would be assured, seems hopelessly utopian now. We now
know that there are multiple causes of wars and multiple reasons why wars
continue, and we do not necessarily think we can understand, much less solve, all
of them. The dream of the 19705 peace movement was 'turning swords iuto
ploughshares' -, the militaIY equivalent of normalizing all deviants. But nobody
talks about .universal peace now, outside of New Age circles concerned only with
psychic peace. Social democratic parties that during the 1970s promoted (lisar­
mament in general are now happy to talk about 'just wars' and about
action in other countries to prevent or halt human rights violations.
Disarmament efforts now do not invoke the kind of totalizing peace
associated with the anti-Vietnam war movement (,What if they gave a war and
nobody came?' 'War is bad for children and other living things', and so
What we see now are mostly uncoordinated e!lorts to achieve targeted, partial
disarmament -- applying only to nuclear weapons, or only to 'weapons of mass
destruction', or only to 'the axis of evil', or only to one country, or one 'terrorist'
organization, or only to a particular list of 'terrorist' organizations, or only to a
particular state apparatus. Like targeted governance generally, these efforts are .'
justilied as information-driven and hence as not ideological. Before invading
in March of 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a widely publi­
cized Dresentation at the UN in which Powemoint slides Dumorted to let the
world see 'with its own Bruno Latour would
arsenal of chemical weapons. Of course critics pointed out that we and Colin
Powell eould only see trucks and roads and buildings; but nevertheless, the
point is that invading another country was supposed to be justified through infor­
mation, through 'hard facts', rather than simply through political ideology. This
is the international equivalent of intelligence-led policing.
And yet, the projects for the targeted governance of world security, like
targeted policing at the urban level, also reveal the pc-rsistence of a certain
utopian dream of total, non-targeted security. Many of those who urge the
Israeli government to disarm just a lillie bit in some parts of the occupied terri­
tories are motivated not by a bureaucratic notion of what's most dlicient and
but by a deeply held commitment to the 'perpetual peace' ideal of
Arabs and Jews living in harmony. And the targeting of 'the axis of evil' by the
US government is clearly linked to a rather apocalyptic notion of 'manifest
destiny' and total world domination. These days wars are usually lought one
country at a time; but there are always more tyrants to be deposed, more geopo­
litical ol~jectives to be secured.
Liberalism has been defined as arising out of a concern not to govel'll too
llIuch (Rose 1999). But the new neoliberal strategies for the governance of security
could be seen as suggesting that liberalism is perhaps only a fear of governing too
 248 Mariana Valverde and Michael Mopas Insecurity alld targeted governance :,: 't~

~ i much all at once. 'Targeting' does not necessarily mean governing less. There are References
always more targets; and there are endless ways of fiddling with existing 'smart' Anderson, M. (191\9) Polieill,1? the Jl'orld: iute/jioi alld UllJ I)olitics of illtemal;Ollal police (Oojlflotioll,
weapons, smart drugs, and targeted social programmes. The logic of targeted Oxford: Clarendoll Press.
governance is in its own way as endless, as utopian, as the better-known IOllic of 1 Brogden, M. and Shearing, C.
totalitarian controL !1 G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. (eds) (1991) The FiJUcmdl i~ffecl: sludies ill gQ1ll'mmen­
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

~
Castel, R. (1991) 'From dangerollsness to risk', in G. Burchell, C.
Notes (cds) The FOl/amlt F!fict: studies ill gOllerlllllentality, Ulliversity of' Chicallo Press.

2
Perhaps the key vector for F'oucauldian illlluences in 1\merican crimillology and "ncin)"",,)
studies isJonathall Simon (ef. his forthcoming book, Governing Through Crime).
See Cohen (\985), and the inlluential anthology edited by D. Garland and P. Young,
j Cohen, S. (1985) VisiQns of Sodal COlltrol, New York: Polity Press.
The Local Governance of Crime: aPfJeals to communi!), alld jlartllmhijls, New

~
The Power to Pllnil'h (1983).
~
3 We adopt here Hirst and Thompson's useful distinction between multinational enti­
ties, which function around the world but nevertheless work through and in stales,
:1
and the much-touted but much rarer stateless 'global' or 'transnational' processes and ,I
entities. Peacekeeping in Afghallistan is indeed a multinational elldeavour, but
il is hardly a stale-less
4 The International Criminal Police Commission, and its French-based successor, the
International Criminal Police Office (Interpol), have supplied a network of communi­
cation among participating national police organizations. But Interpol is not so much
all instance of global governallce as a falley 'policeman '$ club' (Anderson 19B9:
where important profes~iollal contacls are made by senior officers from around the
world. There is no such thing a5 global or even international policing,
speaking, although there arc of course some legal and political tools that translate
priorities from one country to another (most notably the US war on drugs,
which has been forcibly exported to various Latin 1\merican countries, but even in
that case US nolice officers callnot be directly involved in the way that US
involved).
5 Jonathan Simon,.John Pratt, Kevin Stenson, Pat O'Malley aad Kelly Hannah-Molfat
are among the main contributors to this literature.
6 We thank Pat O'Malley for many discussions on the issue of whether the most useful
categorization of risk technologies is that which would separate exclusionarv from
inclusionary risk measurement techniques, although he is not responsible for
we claim here.
7 Addressing a hypothetical (optimist) critic, Hobbes justifies his argumem
T. (19G8 [165 Leviathan, London:
will trade in all rights for security with evidence drawn from
of risk and community: the adjudication of community
mPH,.H.i,.",· 'let him therefore consider with himsclfe, when taking
Jniversity Press.
M. (2000) 'Bureaucratization and social control: historical foundations of inter­
national police cooperation', IAuJ alld Society Review, 34(3): 739-778.
Dll!lield, M. (200 I) Global Governance and Ihe New Him: tlte mergiug of developmelll and secwi!l',
New York: Zed Books.
Ericson, R. and Haggerty, K. (1997) Policing t/ze Risk Society, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Feeley, M. and Simon, J. (1992) 'The new penology: notes on the ('merging strategy for
corrections and its implications', Criminology, 30: 49--74.
Garland, D. (200 I) nle Culture of Control: crime alld social order in COlltempomo' Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Garland, D. allel Young, P. (cds) (1983) The Power 10 Punish: COittemporary Illma/ity alld social
Loudon: Heinemann EducatiOllal Hooks.
'Making sense of intelligence? A cybernetic model in analyzing infor­
mation aud power in police intelligence processes', Policing alld Society, 8: 289314.
Haggerty, K. and E:ricson, R. (2001) 'The military technostructures of policing', in E
Kraska (ed.) MilitarizJng the American Criminal Justice .Y;stem: the c/ulltging roles q/tlze armed
and the police, Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Hanllah-MoITat, K. (2003) 'Risk and need', unpublished paper submitted to British}ollrTlol
q/
Hirst, P. and
jlossibilities amJPTHflurp, 2l1d edn,
Levi, R. (2000) 'The

and Society, 29(4): 578-·60 I.

to sleep, he locks his doors;
whell even in his house he locks his chests, and this when he knows there be Lawes, Moore, D. and Haggerty, K. (200 I) 'Bring it on home: home drug testing and the reloca­
and publike Officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall bee done him .. .' tion of the war on drugs', Social mid Legal Studies, 10(3): 377395.
1968: 18(187). O'Malley, P (1996). 'Risk and responsibility', in A. Barry, T Osborne, and N. Rose
8 In the citv of Toronto, the density of police patrols is determined - in a curious Foucault alld Political Reason: liberalism, Ileo-liberalism alld rationalities f!l gOl'ernment, London:
consumer-driven targeting- by the number of phone calls to police origi­ UCLPrcss.
nating from the area. Thus, poorer areas, which in Toronto as elsewhere generate 'Uncertain subjects: liberalism and contract', EC()llol1~)! (Iud 29(4):
more calls to police per household than upper-class Ileighbollrhoods where problems 460484.
arc usually solved without recourse to the police, end up being more heavily policed. Poovey, M. (1998) A Histol)' of tlle Modem Fact: limb/ems 0/ kllowledf;e ill the seimct,) of wealth and
Complaint-driven largeting is common in other lields (liquor licensing inspections, for
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
or police raids on street prostitutes); its logic appears similar to that of Arcountil!g as Social
Power, M. (1994) 'The a u d i t , ill A.
governance driven by expert-compiled data, but it could be argued that it is
and ins/iMianal Practice, New York: Cambridge Press.
actually the opposite of inlormation-driven, 'evidence-b,lsed' targeting.
l) One could cite here the immcnsc popularity, among ordinary people as well as of tlte private London: Routledge.
experts, of the 'small is beautiful' school of urban dcsigu and planning that New York: Cambridge
the Le Corbusier-innuCllced grander proiects of the I 950s alld I960s. University Press.
250 Manana Valverde and Michael Mopas

··--(1999) Powers qf Freedom: r~framitlg political thought, New York: Cambridge

Pres~. Index

Rose, N. and Miller, l~ (1992) 'Political power beyond the state: problcmatics of govern­
ment', British}oumal qf Sociolo.p,y, 43(2): 173· 205.
Shearing, C. and Stenning, P. (cds) (1987) Private Policillg, Ncwbury Park:
Shcptycki, J. (1998) 'Policing, postmodernislll and trallSnationalizatiou', British ]ouJ'Ilal qf
485-503.
governance and the problem or desire', in R. Ericson and
Toronto: University of Tbrollto Press.
Walker, N. (2000) 'Transnational contexts', ill E Lcishmall, 13. Loveday and S. Savage
(cds) Core Juue.l ill Policing, New York: Longman.

active sodety 107

actor lletworks 59- 75

Actor-Network Theory 10, Hi, 61· 4

Economic Cooperation 50

ACVAFS .lee American COllllcil of

Asian Development Bank 102

Voluntary Agencies [or Foreign Services

asselllblage 11-15,65,83, 95-250; ethical

adjudication 84
14, 197, 199 203; regulation of 83

advanced liberal government lBO, 21314

at a distance participation in globalizing

A(~hanistan I 10
economy 212-32

Africa 12
Atlantic 41

African Devcloumcnt Bank 102

Atlantidsm 45, 49

agellcem.ents I 97
audit, mntractualisll1 and benchmarking

agen(.), 181-6; technologies o[ 180··81

213-15

Agency for International Development 101

Australia 50, 55, 65, 68, 233; developmcnt

AID .lee for International

of communication in 68

Development autonomy 34

aid buys reforms 103··5 Axis of Evil 52, 247

security 246
Azerbaijan 206

Alaska 206

Alballia 139
BA sec British Airways

alcohol dependencc 241

Badinter Commission 139

Algeria 30
Baku-Tbilisi-Ccyhan pipeline 197, 204 7

alienage 120
Balkans 140

alleviation of poverty 98
Barclays 203

Alliance for Progress 102

bare life 82, 84

American Count:il of Voluntary Am"llrH"

Behemoth 49

for I'orcign Services 127

Belfast 243

Americas 29, 33, 41, 44, 51-2

lklgrade 136-7, 140, 147

line 51
benchmarking 14, 175, 187-8, 217 18;

Amnesty Intel'l1ational 202-3

audit, contractualism and 213-15; in
of government 180
New Zealand sheep meat industry
ANT .lee Actor-Network Theory
2 and World Bank 196: sec also
anti-poverty programmcs 102
global
anti-Vietnam war movement 247
bending space 67 8,

logics 151
Berlin Wall 10

APEC .Ice Asia· Pacific Economic

best practice I B8, 214--15, 217 18

COOl le-ration
the population 9B
Apple 67
244
appropriation 45 -7

architedurc of rode 83