The mutuality of risk and community

The Adjudication of Community Notification Statutes

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2159247
AutoresRon Levi (0000-0003-1208-5219)
Ano2000
Volume29
Fascículo4
Páginas578-601
Data de publicação2000-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEconomy and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0308-5147 • E-ISSN: 1469-5766
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03085140050174796
OpenAlexW1976646700
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas20
Referências citadas4

Although it has drawn significant attention in the legal literature, the adjudication of community notification statutes (often referred to as 'Megan's Law' in the United States) demonstrates a centrality of both risk and community that deserves attention from a governance perspective. In this paper, I focus on the ways in which concepts of risk and community are mutually constitutive, and how the adjudication of community notification statutes relies on particular visions of 'community' to engage particular ways of conceiving of 'risk', much of which relies on a rejection of expertise and a focus on 'common sense'. This focus on 'common sense', opens up new problematics of government: courts adjudicating community notification cases are working to define the particular mechanics of a state-civil society partnership, and thereby operationalize the preventive state without rendering the state redundant or obsolete, and without opening the state to new forms of legal and political accountability. While providing a case study in the move to advanced liberal governance in the area of criminal law, this adjudication also reveals the contingent nature of risk, and the ways in which judicial invocation of 'risk' and its management can constitute liberal subjects who continue to rely on the state, while no longer expecting the state to be accountable for crime or its control. Keywords: RiskCommunityCommon SenseMegan'S LawCrime Prevention

Accountability · Adjudication · Business · Corporate governance · Operationalization · Political science · Politics · Regulatory state · Sociology · Statute · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Law