Assembling Risk and the Restructuring of Penal Control

Abstract

In this paper, we draw attention to new assemblages with risk in order to highlight the multiple forms of knowledge and logics at work in new risk assessment practices. We seek to complicate the theoretical explanations of risk by highlighting how risk logics merge and shift in tandem with various rationalities. For example, when risk is merged with need, needs are reconfigured as criminogenic needs but, in this process, risk becomes a fluid concept that can be treated, altered and transformed. When risk is merged with more welfare and disciplinary-based logics, such as rehabilitation and clinical assessments, new forms of risk management are produced, such as targeted treatment. Through these processes, risk’s association with actuarial calculations is weakened by other judgments and appraisals. As well, risk takes on more productive ameliorative possibilities, associated with risk minimization. These new assemblages enable new forms of risk-based governance as evident in contemporary correctional case management planning and the accreditation of programmes. This analysis is developed through an examination of the Level of Service Inventory (LSI)—an internationally used risk assessment instrument.