Dealing with the exceptional. Pre crime anti–terrorism policy and practice

Abstract

This article looks at pre-crime policing policies in the context of counter-terrorism. It challenges the criminological and legal literature that seeks to claim pre-crime practices link coercive state action to discriminatory suspicion and a threat to liberal ideals. It does so by suggesting that the academic literature is based in exiting paradigms that fail to recognise the significance of the exceptional threat the police and security services now face. The notion of the exceptional reveals the reality of their duty of responsibility, a concept that some criminologists and liberal lawyerschoose to ignor