NCJ Number
212555
Journal
Crime, Law and Social Change Volume: 43 Issue: 2-3 Dated: 2005 Pages: 149-173
Date Published
2005
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This paper analyzes the importance of risk management techniques in the war on terror.
Abstract
According to knowledgeable resources, mathematical risk assessment models are important policy tools in the war on terror, from the protection of borders to international financial flows, from airport security to daily financial transactions. This article analyzes risk as danger and economic opportunity in two distinct areas of the war on terror: the policing of the movement of money, and the movement of people. The article begins by examining the war on terrorist finance, and discusses how the scrutiny of financial data has become inscribed with a preventative function in the fight against terrorism. It assesses the social consequences of the financial fight against terrorism and discusses the extension of risk management into border controls via a focus on the US VISIT program (a set of techniques for regulating mobility). The purpose of this article is to challenge the discourse of risk multiplication and intensification that has played such a central role in both the war on terror and the booming homeland security market. It is not so much that new risks have come into being, but that society has come to understand itself and its problems in terms of risk management. One of the many implications of risk-based means of governing in the war on terror, as has been shown, is the ongoing displacement and reallocation of risk that cannot be so easily calculated and controlled. References