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O'Malley, in this beautifully simple, insightful and erudite book, locates risk within a variety of mentalities that have been, and are being, deployed to govern crime" -- in doing so he places risk, where it should be, at the very centre of criminological thought and practice. This is an important book.' - Clifford Shearing, Centre of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town. Over recent years, the governance of crime - from policing and crime prevention to sentencing and prison organization - has moved away from a focus on reforming offenders toward preventing crime and mana

While many connections can be drawn with some confidence between neoliberalism and penal policy and practice, it is difficult to support Loïc Wacquant's attempt to render punitive penality integral to neoliberalism, and to regard both as being strategically exported from the US. Neoliberalism is a fluid and variable political formation, both over time and internationally, and is impossible to reduce to a few primary characteristics such as a specific penal policy. Correspondingly, neoliberal doctrines and regimes appear to be consistent with many forms of penal policy other than punitive imprisonment. This is partly because of neoliberalism's own variability, but also because of the impact of local conditions and the multiple ways through which penal policy may (or may not) be linked with particular political formations. Not only theoretically but also politically, Wacquant's thesis remains of questionable strategic utility although evidently valuable in consciousness raising.