Criminogenic needs and the transformative risk subject

Abstract

This article examines the discrepancies between theories of risk and penality and emergent strategies of risk/need identification and management. Working back from the strategies themselves, I argue that the current generations of risk/need technologies are a significant departure from the pessimistic theoretical accounts of risk in criminal justice associated with the ‘new penology’ and ‘actuarial justice’. I argue that risk knowledges are fluid and flexible and capable of supporting a range of penal strategies. The evolution and meanings of risk in correctional assessment and classification are examined to show how understandings of risk have shifted from static to dynamic categorizations. I show how the concept of need is fused with risk, how particular conceptions of ‘need’ and ‘risk’ are situated in local penal narratives, how need reconstructs risk and revives correctional treatment as an efficient risk minimization strategy. I argue that strategic alignment of risk with narrowly defined intervenable needs contributes to the production of a transformative risk subject who unlike the ‘fixed or static risk subject’ is amenable to targeted therapeutic interventions. Newly formed risk/needs categorizations and subsequent management strategies give rise to a new politics of punishment, in which different risk/needs groupings compete for limited resources, discredit collective group claims to resources, redistribute responsibilities for risk/needs management and legitimate both inclusive and exclusionary penal strategies.