The Insecurity State: Vulnerable Autonomy and the Right to Security in the Criminal Law (Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice)

__The Insecurity State__ is a book about the recent emergence of a 'right to security' in the UK's criminal law. __The Insecurity State__ sets out from a detailed analysis of the law of the Anti-Social Behavior Order and of the Coalition government's proposed replacement for it. It shows that the liabilities contained in both seek to protect a 'freedom from fear' and that this 'right to security' explains a lot of other recently enacted criminal offences. This book identifies the normative source of this right to security in the idea of vulnerable autonomy. It demonstrates that the vulnerability of autonomy is an axiomatic assumption of political theories that have enjoyed a preponderant influence right across the political mainstream. It considers the influence of these normative commitments on the policy of both the New Labour and the Coalition governments. __The Insecurity____State__ then explores how the wider contemporary criminal law also institutionalizes the right to security, and how this differs from the law's earlier protection of security interests. It examines the right to security, and its attendant penal liabilities, in the context of both human rights protection and normative criminal law theories. Finally the book exposes the paradoxical claims about the state's authority that are entailed by penal laws that assume the vulnerability of the normal, representative citizen.__The Insecurity State__ offers a criminal law theory that is unorthodox in both its method and its content:- It is focused on a contemporary development in the 'special part' of the criminal law rather than the law's general principles.- It is an explanatory political sociology of substantive criminal law rather than the more familiar normative theory; but it is an explanatory theory that seeks to understand the law's historical development through an investigation of the changing character of its normative order.- It does not apply a pre-existing sociological or philosophical theory to the law; rather it develops a theoretical explanation from detailed legal analysis and reconstruction of New Labour's penal laws.- It concludes that repressive criminal laws have arisen from a deficit of political authority rather than from excessive authoritarianism. The Insecurity State is a book about the recent emergence of a 'right to security' in the UK's criminal law. The Insecurity State sets out from a detailed analysis of the law of the Anti-Social Behavior Order and of the Coalition government's proposed replacement for it. It shows that the liabilities contained in both seek to protect a 'freedom from fear' and that this 'right to security' explains a lot of other recently enacted criminal offences. This book identifies the normative source of this right to security in the idea of vulnerable autonomy. It demonstrates that the vulnerability of autonomy is an axiomatic assumption of political theories that have enjoyed a preponderant influence right across the political mainstream. It considers the influence of these normative commitments on the policy of both the New Labour and the Coalition governments. The Insecurity State then explores how the wider contemporary criminal law also institutionalizes the right to security, and how this differs from the law's earlier protection of security interests. It examines the right to security, and its attendant penal liabilities, in the context of both human rights protection and normative criminal law theories. Finally the book exposes the paradoxical claims about the state's authority that are entailed by penal laws that assume the vulnerability of the normal, representative citizen. The Insecurity State offers a criminal law theory that is unorthodox in both its method and its content: - It is focused on a contemporary development in the 'special part' of the criminal law rather than the law's general principles. - It is an explanatory political sociology of substantive criminal law rather than the more familiar normative theory; but it is an explanatory theory that seeks to understand the law's historical development through an investigation of the changing character of its normative order. - It does not apply a pre-existing sociological or philosophical theory to the law; rather it develops a theoretical explanation from detailed legal analysis and reconstruction of New Labour's penal laws. - It concludes that repressive criminal laws have arisen from a deficit of political authority rather than from excessive authoritarianism. The Insecurity State is a book about the recent emergence of a'right to security'in the UK's criminal law. The Insecurity State sets out from a detailed analysis of the law of the Anti-Social Behaviour Order and of the Coalition government's proposed replacement for it. It shows that the liabilities contained in both seek to protect a'freedom from fear'and that this'right to security'explains a lot of other recently enacted criminal offences. This book identifies the normative source of this right to security in the idea of vulnerable autonomy. It demonstrates that the vulnerability of autonomy is an axiomatic assumption of political theories that have enjoyed a preponderant influence right across the political mainstream. It considers the influence of these normative commitments on the policy of both the New Labour and the Coalition governments. The Insecurity State then explores how the wider contemporary criminal law also institutionalizes the right to security, and how this differs from the law's earlier protection of security interests. It examines the right to security, and its attendant penal liabilities, in the context of both human rights protection and normative criminal law theories. Finally the book exposes the paradoxical claims about the state's authority that are entailed by penal laws that assume the vulnerability of the normal, representative citizen. The Insecurity State offers a criminal law theory that is unorthodox in both its method and its content: BLIt is focused on a contemporary development in the'special part'of the criminal law rather than the law's general principles. BLIt is an explanatory political sociology of substantive criminal law rather than the more familiar normative theory; but it is an explanatory theory that seeks to understand the law's historical development through an investigation of the changing character of its normative order. BLIt does not apply a pre-existing sociological or philosophical theory to the law; rather it develops a theoretical explanation from detailed legal analysis and reconstruction of New Labour's penal laws. BLIt concludes that repressive criminal laws have arisen from a deficit of political authority rather than from excessive authoritarianism.

For more than a decade, broad and vaguely defined new offences have been enacted in many areas of the criminal law, such as terrorism, money-laundering, fraud, sex offences and anti-social behavior. These have expanded police powers and prosecutorial discretion with little regard for the rule of law. Most theorists have explained the gap between legislative policy and the liberal principles of criminal law theory as the result of 'penal populism': politicians have sacrificed sound normative principles in an opportunistic appeal to an angry and fearful electorate.

The Insecurity State, by contrast, argues that this so-called 'populism' in the criminal law can claim some normative principles of its own. It identifies these principles through an analysis of the iconic anti-social behaviour order (ASBO), the flagship of recent British criminal justice policy. Demonstrating that the controversial orders impose a liability on those who fail to reassure others about their future security, he traces the justification of this liability through the conditional character of citizenship in New Labour policy to an underlying concept of 'vulnerable autonomy' that the ASBO serves to protect.

The book argues that the vulnerability of individual autonomy is an idea deeply embedded in the political theories that have most influenced British and American political life in recent decades. He shows that the ASBO is the archetype of a wide range of other recently enacted criminal offences in the UK and USA that are justified by the same normative structure. Finally it investigates the paradoxical implications of institutionalising the vulnerability of citizens in the terms of the substantive criminal law. In so doing, the book identifies a weakening of political authority at the heart of contemporary security laws.

This book presents a theory of the recent emergence of a right to security and of its protection by the criminal law in the UK. It states that the protection of such a right makes sense of the liabilities found in much of the expansive criminal legislation enacted under that government. This book identifies the normative source of the right to security in the idea of vulnerable autonomy. It demonstrates that this idea is axiomatic to political theories that have enjoyed a preponderant influence across the political mainstream, well beyond the ranks of the Labour government. It considers the continuing influence of these normative commitments on the Coalition government's policy. The book explores how the contemporary criminal law's institutionalization of a right to security differs from the law's earlier protection of security interests. It exposes the paradox presented by laws that declare their own lack of authority by threatening punishments that are justified on the assumption that the normal condition of the representative subject of law is one of feeling vulnerable to criminal victimization. The book presents unorthodox criminal law theory in two respects. First, it offers an explanatory political sociology of a contemporary trend in the criminal law's ‘special part’ rather than a philosophical treatment of the law's general principles. Second, rather than applying a pre-existing sociological or philosophical theory to the law, it develops its theoretical explanation from a detailed legal analysis and reconstruction of New Labour's flagship criminal justice policy, the Anti-Social Behaviour Order The Insecurity State examines the recent emergence of a r̀ight to security' in the UK's criminal law. It sets out from a detailed analysis of the law of the Anti-Social Behaviour Order and of the coalition government's proposed replacement for it. It shows that the liabilities contained in both seek to protect a f̀reedom from fear'. The book identifies the normative source of this right to security in the idea of vulnerable autonomy. It demonstrates that the vulnerability of autonomy is an axiomatic assumption of political theories that have enjoyed a preponderant influence right across the political mainstream. It considers the influence of these normative commitments on the policy of both the New Labour and the coalition governments The Insecurity State then explores how the wider contemporary criminal law also institutionalizes the right to security, and how this differs from the law's earlier protection of security interests. It examines the right to security, and its attendant penal liabilities, in the context of both human rights protection and normative criminal law theories. Finally the book exposes the paradoxical claims about the state's authority that are entailed by penal laws that assume the vulnerability of the normal, representative citizen --Book Jacket Content: Introduction 1. Failure to Reassure as Threat 2. Failure to Reassure as Public Wrong 3. Freedom from Fear 4. The Reassurance Gap 5. The Ideology of Vulnerable Autonomy 6. The Right to Security and the ECHR 7. The Right to Security Beyond the ASBO 8. Security Interests in the Criminal Law 9. The Right to Security in Criminal Law Theory 10. The Insecurity State Afterword: On the Future of Authority This text analyses the anti-social behaviour order and demonstrates that orders impose a liability on those who fail to reassure others about their future security. It traces the justification of this liability through the conditional character of citizenship in New Labour policy to an underlying concept of vulnerable autonomy