British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on May 11, 2009
British Journal of Criminology 2009 49(5):628-645; doi:10.1093/bjc/azp023
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The British Journal of Criminology 49:628-645 (2009)
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Pre-Crime and Counter-Terrorism
Imagining Future Crime in the ‘War on Terror’
* Jude McCulloch, Monash University, Australia; jude.mcculloch{at}arts.monash.edu.au. Sharon Pickering, Monash University, Australia.
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Abstract |
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This article looks at pre-crime in the context of counter-terrorism. Pre-crime links coercive state actions to suspicion without the need for charge, prosecution or conviction. It also includes measures that expand the remit of the criminal law to include activities or associations that are deemed to precede the substantive offence targeted for prevention. The trend towards anticipating risks as a driving principle in criminal justice was identified well before 2001. However, risk and threat anticipation have substantially expanded in the context of contemporary counter-terrorism frameworks. Although pre-crime counter-terrorism measures are rationalized on the grounds of preventing terrorism, these measures do not fit in the frame of conventional crime prevention. The article argues that the shift to pre-crime embodies a trend towards integrating national security into criminal justice along with a temporal and geographic shift that encompasses a blurring of the borders between the states’ internal and external coercive capacities. The counter-terrorism framework incorporates and combines elements of criminal justice and national security, giving rise to a number of tensions. One key tension is between the ideal of impartial criminal justice and the politically charged concept of national security. Pre-crime counter-terrorism measures can be traced through a number of interlinking historical trajectories including the wars on crime and drugs, criminalization and, more fundamentally, in colonial strategies of domination, control and repression. The article concludes by identifying a number of challenges and opportunities for criminology in the shift from post-crime criminal justice to pre-crime national security.