Dealing with the exceptional: pre-crime anti-terrorism policy and practice

This article looks at pre-crime policing policies in the context of counterterrorism. 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 on 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 lawyers choose to ignore.