Issues of Legitimacy: Legal and Political

Abstract

By harnessing immobilisation to risk control, the security sanction was able to provide a kind of protective cocoon around those aspects and areas of everyday life that have come to have a special value during the neo-liberal era of governance. Quality of life—such a signal of longing for a more settled and certain time—has become one of these areas. And similarly the human body—whether this relates to children because of their added value in a time of their own scarcity, and when other sources providing some sort of permanency seem to be dissolving; whether this relates to women, given the way in which the bodies of women in particular have become prized emblems for celebration and self-fulfilment; or whether this relates to random victims of terrorist attacks. Of course, criminal law can be used to prosecute and punish with vigour those who do make such attacks on such aspects and areas. But what is different about the security sanction is that it provides a form of defence against would-be attackers and destroyers. It has made possible the control of risks posed by any potential assailants; as well as providing the means to act against “warning signs” that indicate such crimes are on the way—signs such as low-level street disorder and other forms of anti-social behaviour; signs, in the case of potential Muslim terrorists flying in the US such as over-enthusiastic toilet flushing or undertaking mathematical equations, or even speaking Arabic; signs such as hanging around outside schools in the case of potential sex offenders. The risk-driven paradigm of criminal law and punishment has been able to variously provide these levels of protection, using retrospective legislation, shifting burdens of proof, changing rules of evidence, abandoning due process and so on to put these measures into law.