Crime victimisation and inequality in risk society

Abstract

We live in both a risk society (Beck 1992) and an exclusive society (Young 1999). At the same time as we orient ourselves around the risks and dangers which we see surrounding us in our everyday lives, so also do our social and political arrangements lend themselves to the magnification of inequalities in access to those goods which reassure, protect or expose ourselves to risk. As our perception of the ‘bads’ increases, so do we seek to garner the ‘goods’ which would keep them at bay, trading on our capital reserves and capacities across the various spheres of economy, community and culture. The ‘ontological insecurity’ which the condition of late modernity inspires in us (Giddens 1990; Young 1999) fuses with the apprehension of mundane insecurities, pressurising us to invest in the means of risk avoidance (Hope and Sparks 2000). As we feel increasingly that the public sphere alone can no longer guarantee sufficiently the public goods of everyday safety (see Garland 1996), so we are thrown upon our own individual and collective resources and strategies to acquire the private goods which would remedy our perceived security deficit. And our incapacity to protect ourselves from risk leads to frustration with government – still seen as the primary provider of safety in modern society – and with ourselves, as a reflection of our own powerlessness in the face of the risks and harms that surround us.