Methodologically Positioning my Thesis

The relationship between crime prevention, public protection, the management and punishment of offenders and calculations of risk have become major and influential aspects in the underlying composition of the implementation and delivery of sentencing provisions in the criminal justice system. This research study developed around the idea of how an expert language of risk and risk assessment had come to be a commonly used and influential method to situate an individual according to the level of risk used to predict the future offending of that person.

Advancing technology and the development of expert knowledge symbolise the ways in which risks have come to be managed by criminal justice systems and its agencies. What is of particular interest to this study are the mechanisms that are used to translate expert knowledge into practical ways in which criminal justice and its agencies are able to define and respond to an individual’s offending (Boyne 2003) and how technologies have aided these developments. Ways of assessing risk have become an integral aspect to the functioning of criminal justice and its agencies, repeatedly utilised by the

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Probation Trust and the courts to assist in determining appropriate supervision levels and sentencing, as well as by the Prison Service and Parole Boards to assist in determining appropriate security levels and parole decisions (see Nuttal et al 1978, Wasik and Taylor 1991, Copas et al 1996). The Offender Assessment System (OASys), a popular and commonly used computerised risk assessment tool, would be a prime example of the way in which the criminal justice system and its agencies are able to utilise expert knowledge and technical information to determine how an offender is to be managed in the context of their offence.

Risk-assessment can be seen as having become a central component to policy-led criminal justice practices that are embedded within ways of thinking about behaviour in relation to criminality. Ways of thinking that are deemed necessary to understand offending have given credence to a knowledge-base that places emphasis upon a discourse whose intention is to produce and facilitate practices such as managing and governing criminal bodies. Many of the questions that criminal justice and its agencies have sought to answer have largely been understood through the application of objective methods that have become industrial and mechanical by design. On the surface risk assessment instruments and actuarial practices appear to be capable of producing an objective understanding that is deemed able to answer questions around the types of risk that exist or how offenders could be best managed. That’s not to say that current notions of understanding risk and risk assessment practices are worthless; risk-focused criminal justice practices have an important role in the ethical implications of managing offending and destructive behaviour. Rather it is an observation of the extent to which the epistemological framing of the nature of risk has become entrenched in a scientific discourse and consequently have come to be regarded as valid and true whilst arguably remaining largely unquestioned.

Scientific notions of assessing and measuring risk become authorised through specialised knowledge systems that are capable of producing generalised calculations of risk. Knowledge becomes sanctioned through modern systems of science and technology, and as a result, innovative and creative ways of knowing and thinking become marginalised. Creative ways of thinking about risk are largely abandoned in

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favour of cost-effective and speedy technologies that can be manipulated to create systems intended for control. Unless, that is, creativity is steeped in a scientific discourse that is able to validate its position as specialist or niche. For example, graffiti artists are constructed within criminal law as committing crimes of vandalism or criminal damage, however, when convicted graffiti artists may engage with the Probation Trust in government funded art projects where they become reconstructed within a discourse of rehabilitation. Similarly, offenders who are convicted for motoring offences may be offered (as part of their sentencing provision) a place to attend a motor mechanics course. Criminal justice validates ‘creative’ provisions such as these by placing them within a context of expertise and by the use of discourse that is able to translate a language of ‘risky behaviour’ into a language of rehabilitation. What does this mean for the individual offender? How can it be the case that an individual can be positioned as being a criminal and a rehabilitated offender within the same context? What conditions make this possible? What is clear is the extent to which ‘risky behaviours’, especially those that result in offending, are perceived as problematic within criminal justice. What does this articulate about risk and offending, or to be more specific what is this not telling us about risk and offending? Within criminal justice, risk is clearly verbalised within a context of science and expertise but do individuals who offend view themselves in the same way? Do individuals consider themselves to be ‘risky’? If scientific discourse is promoted at the expense of creative ways of thinking and if criminal justice expertise is endorsed at the expense of the individual how appropriate are current notions of understanding risk within criminal justice.