Logics of risk: police communications in an age of uncertainty

Abstract

The risk society thesis suggests that risk thinking has, in the twenty-first century, become pervasive across numerous organisations, including police. Police are now one of a number of agents that put themselves forward as expert advisers on risk reduction and management techniques. Police organisations not only govern through risk logics and make claims to special expertise in risk management, communication and reduction; they are also increasingly governed by risk logics that, amongst other things, circumscribe what information can be released to the media and public, when, by whom, and to what ends. Based on qualitative research interviews with police communications professionals in Australian policing organisations, this paper argues that risk as an organising logic has strongly influenced the nature of contemporary police/media/public communications.