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Pre-crime: Preemption, Precaution and the

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Book Reviews 301

safeguard the public? This chapter revolves around the debate over the single beat vs. the
double beat patrol deployment policy. The double beat patrol deployment policy
requires agencies to assign two officers to handle particular situations/assignments or
patrol specific locations. Several benefits can be attributed to the double beat patrol
policy—enhancement of officer safety, reduction in complaints against the police, and
enhances observational capabilities. The debate over the single beat vs. the double beat
patrol was sparked by the murder of a young HKP constable who was on duty at the
time of his death.
Policing computer crime in Hong Kong is the theme in chapter 5. The chapter exten-
sively examines the emergence and distribution of computer crime in Hong Kong, and as
Wong remarks, ‘‘the most prevalent computer crime category is hacking, or ‘unauthor-
ized access to computer by telecommunication’’’ (p. 172). In chapter 6, the text further
provides a succinct overview of police powers to intercept communication surveillance
ordinance (ICO) in Hong Kong. This discussion brings to the forefront the conventional
Chinese concepts of qing, li, and fa, which mean ‘‘compassion,’’ ‘‘rite,’’ and ‘‘law’’,
respectively, to foster better understanding of the legitimacy of the ICO. The author
concludes that the ICO legislation process and statutory content did not satisfy the
standards of the three conventional Chinese concepts. Finally, in chapter 7, the
author compares the Chinese Public Security Bureau to the HKP. By doing that,
Wong highlights reform measures adopted by the two institutions as well as reflecting
on the institutions’ respective accomplishments.
My overall impression of this book is mixed. The author has to be commended for
producing the first scholarly work on the HKP. In addition, Wong demonstrated exten-
sive knowledge in the system of policing in Hong Kong by providing exhaustive infor-
mation about the HKP. He needs to be applauded because, most often, comparative
writers do not provide much detail about the subject matter. However, there are several
flaws in this book that reduce its value as a comparative policing text. These issues relate
to the organization and presentation of materials in the text. First, the chapters are not
organized in a coherent manner, and the author struggles to present the amount of
information he has about the HKP. This results in a presentation of materials in the
book that sometimes seems arbitrary. Second, the author has a lot of footnotes on each
page, and that interrupts the flow of the text. Third, and relatedly, a few of the footnotes
are in Chinese language, making these references inaccessible to some readers.

Jude McCulloch and Dean Wilson, Pre-crime: Pre-emption, precaution and the future.
Routledge: Abingdon, 2016; 154 pp. ISBN 9781138781696, £90.00 (hbk)

Reviewed by: James Oleson, University of Auckland, New Zealand

The prediction of future crime is one of the enduring challenges of criminology. Ever
since Lombroso linked the median occipital fossa in a brigand’s skull to congenital
criminality in 1872, criminologists have endeavoured to understand the aetiology of
criminal behaviour. Today, the proliferation of risk prediction instruments has revolu-
tionised criminal justice systems around the world, producing a ‘new penology’ of risk
management (Feeley & Simon, 1992). The emergence of pre-crime – science fiction

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302 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 49(2)

novelist Philip K. Dick’s (1956/2004) term for crimes that have not yet occurred but will
occur – is the logical next step in this evolution. In a pre-crime regime, the state antici-
pates future crime threats and proceeds as if those crimes have already occurred, pre-
empting the threats by restricting, incapacitating, and punishing those deemed to present
the threat. The logic of pre-crime is most evident in the context of terrorism – where the
precautionary principle is employed to legitimise coercive state interventions, even in the
absence of decisive information, because of the catastrophic magnitude of potential
harms – but it extends, increasingly, to other regions of criminal justice, as well.
Jude McCulloch and Dean Wilson’s Pre-crime: Pre-emption, Precaution and the Future
provides the first book-length survey of the scholarship on pre-crime. It is a slim volume of
critical criminology, organised into eight pithy chapters. Chapter one, ‘Introduction: Pre-
crime – pre-emption, precaution and the future’ defines pre-crime and distinguishes it
from traditional approaches to criminal justice (which typically focuses on completed
or imminent crimes) and from crime risk (which employs criminal history information
to assess identified crime threats). Pre-crime is concerned with as yet unidentified crime
threats, employing suspicion, imagination and speculation (rather than data) to respond
to non-imminent crimes. This chapter establishes the foundations for the book and out-
lines the structure for the chapters that follow. Chapter two, ‘Before pre-crime: A history
of the future’ traces antecedents of pre-crime (e.g. inchoate offences, internment of enemy
aliens) and distinguishes them from what is novel in pre-crime. Chapter three, ‘Risking the
future: Pre-emption, precaution and uncertainty’ explores conceptual linkages between
uncertainty, risk, prevention, precaution and pre-emption. Chapter four, ‘Pre-empting
justice: Pre-crime, precaution and counterterrorism’ examines pre-crime in counterterror-
ism, arguing that pre-crime actually creates the crimes it purports to prevent. Chapter five,
‘Pre-crime science, technology and surveillance’ documents the range of technologies
employed in the service of pre-crime, from data mining and predictive analytics to the
claims of biosocial criminology. Chapter six, ‘Evidence to intelligence: Justice through the
crystal ball’ explores the permeable distinctions between evidence (which is focused on
past crimes by law enforcement) and intelligence (which is collected by national security
actors to address future threats). The criminalization of intelligence and the securitization
of evidence are powerful lens through which to examine the phenomenon of pre-crime.
Chapter seven, ‘Performing terror: Pre-crime, undercover agents and informants’ exam-
ines the use of covert agents and unreliable informants in the infiltration of Muslim
communities, arguing that pre-crime countermeasures produce the terror plots they pur-
port to disrupt. Chapter eight, ‘Pre-crime: Securing a just future’ provides a grim conclu-
sion to the work, describing the rise and spread of pre-crime within criminal justice. The
chapter conclusions, repeating material from the body of the chapters, operate more as
summaries than as conclusions, but they could be useful for readers who want a concise
statement of the book’s arguments.
Pre-crime is a remarkable work of original scholarship. In just 154 pages, its authors
outline a dystopian vision of a new new penology, of risk gone amok, freed from the
moorings of evidentiary requirements. Kafka appears in these pages (p. 93) and although
Orwell is not mentioned explicitly, his presence is unquestionably felt. Pre-crime is a
bleak forecast, a doctor’s unwanted diagnosis, an unflinching stare into an ominously
materialising future. Upon finishing the book, I was left with an image of the state as a
maddened security machine, its jaws gnashing on human life.

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Book Reviews 303

Pre-crime paints a vivid picture, but – like the best scholarship – it left me with
unanswered questions and a desire for more detail. For example, ‘justice’ is an important
concept for McCulloch and Wilson, appearing in three different chapter titles. Pre-crime
appears problematic because it is incommensurable with justice, but ‘justice’ is only
loosely defined: a society in which people are ‘trusted rather than treated as presumptive
enemies’ (p. 142). Without a clearer framework for justice, however, it is difficult to
identify which aspect of pre-crime is problematic. Is it the transformation of populist
prejudices and the catastrophic imagination into actionable intelligence? The emergence
of questionable technologies and the concomitant mystification of prediction science?
The reification of social inequalities? The violation of civil liberties and human rights?
All of these contribute to pre-crime, and it would be useful to parse them in more detail
to understand how, exactly, they trench upon justice.
Similarly, the authors do a fine job of extending an analysis rooted in terrorism to the
criminal justice context (e.g. control orders for organised crime and ‘bikies’), but it
would be fascinating to apply a pre-crime framework to other criminal justice/security
phenomena. Preventive detention regimes, crimmigration (Stumpf, 2006), the opaque
workings of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court and the spread of
sexually violent predator (SVP) legislation would all benefit enormously from pre-crime
analysis. So, too, might substance abuse: after all, civilly committing sex offenders with
mental disorders who present a risk of future offending is logically indistinguishable
from civilly detaining drug addicts who are likely to continue abusing illegal drugs
(Krongard, 2002).
Pre-crime is an urgent and important piece of socio-legal scholarship. McCulloch and
Wilson’s book breaks new ground in the criminological literature on risk and challenges
its readers to confront hard realities about the growing convergence between national
security and criminal justice.

References
Dick, P. K. (1956/2004). The minority report: And other classic stories (Vol. 4). New York, NY:
Citadel Press.
Feeley, M. M., & Simon, J. (1992). The new penology: Notes on the emerging strategy of correc-
tions and its implications. Criminology, 30(4), 449–474.
Krongard, M. L. (2002). A population at risk: Civil commitment of substance abusers after
Kansas v. Hendricks. California Law Review, 90(1), 111–163.
Stumpf, J. P. (2006). The crimmigration crisis: Immigrants, crime, and sovereign power. American
University Law Review, 56(2), 367–419.

Dawn K Cecil, Prison life in popular culture: From the Big House to Orange is the New Black, Lynne
Rienner: Boulder, CO, 2015; 233 pp. ISBN 9781626372795, $58.00 USD (hbk)

Reviewed by: James Oleson, University of Auckland, New Zealand

I recently published an article suggesting that the 18th century shift away from visible,
corporal punishments to concealed, carceral punishments eliminated Durkheimian
social rituals of punishment (Oleson, 2015). This vacuum, I suggest, has been filled
through the consumption of crime and punishment media. In movies and on television,

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