The changes in crime and penal policy the last thirty and forty years seem to trek a trajectory contrary to the path of the penal welfarism described by Garland (1985). In Sweden, the downfall of the rehabilitative ideal in the 1970s opened crime policy as a field for political struggle and political problematizations. This politicized crime policy seems to have come to an end in the 21th century (Andersson & Nilsson 2017).
The purpose of this paper is to analyze what I conceptualize as a post-political crime policy. During 2000s and 2010s something has changed – the polemics concerning policy have been replaced by a consensus built on accepting crime as a major societal problem. But it is not only the general problematization that is accepted; the political consensus also incorporates the means to address the crime problem such as risk-assessments and risk-analysis.
Post-politics relates to an academic discussion that arose due to the end of the cold war – an end that was construed as the liberal capitalist democracy’s victory over communism, thus making it the only feasible political order. Rancière (2004) and Žižek (1999) have understood the post-political condition as a post-ideological governing manifests itself through a range of post-democratic techniques for governing, reducing politics to an administration of social life thus transforming citizens into consumers whilst making consumers satisfaction the soul measure on politics.