The Expanding Boundaries of Crime Control: Governing Security through Regulation

Abstract

The governance of crime and security has undergone major transformations in recent decades. Several important shifts in the rationale and logic of crime control have led to a growth in regulatory practices and an expansion of regulatory provisions. As a result, the scope of actors who regulate behaviors have widened as have the types of tools to facilitate the governance of crime and security also expanded. We argue that the expansion of the boundaries of crime control is facilitated through a wide variety of criminal justice and non-criminal-justice regulatory tools to tackle both social problems and crime. We suggest that the time has come for criminologists to look beyond criminology’s traditional narrow focus on criminal law and the criminal justice apparatus utilized for crime control and engage in the broader discourse of regulation and governance of crime and security.