The Expanding Boundaries of Crime Control: Governing Security through Regulation

The objective of this paper is to explore shifts in the rationale and logic of current crime control that have led to an expansion in regulatory practices. We review the trend lines of commonly used and available metrics with a focus on regulatory agencies and their discretionary role in defining violations and sanctioning behaviors as well as laws that are designed toward pre-crime prevention grounded in the assumptions of risk. We discuss findings in the context of debates relating to temporal, spatial, and sectoral dimensions of regulation and control within the broader framework of governance, risk, and preemptive crime prevention in today’s global capitalist society.