Guilt, Dangerousness and Liability in the Era of Pre-Crime – the Role of Criminology? To Adapt, or to Die, that is the Question!

Abstract There is no doubt that, in terms of criminal policy, we have been living in an era of pre-crime for quite some time now. Whether we like it or not, times have changed and so has the general position on concepts of (criminal) guilt, dangerousness and liability. Whereas once there was a broad consensus that penal repression, at least in principle, should be executed in a strictly postcrime fashion, nowadays the same consensus has been reached on trading freedom (from penal repression) for (promised) security, long before an »actual crime« might even be committed. In this regard, the criminalisation of endangerment and risks only nomotechnically solves the issue of »actual« vs. »potential« crimes – in essence it merely creates a normative fiction of pre-crime crimes, whereas in reality actual crimes do not exist at all. The starting point of criminalisation has clearly shifted away from the guilt of having committed a crime, to the mere dangerousness of potentially committing a crime, which potential as such is purely hypothetical and beyond the grasp of empirical proof. Such shift raises fundamental criminological and sociological questions, just as it highlights our obligation to process and shape this shift. The change of paradigm from post- to pre-crime also makes one wonder about the current and future role of criminology. It makes one wonder about criminology’s capacity to adapt and its willingness to take on a transdisciplinary lead role in scientising or even criminologising the precrime era. In the end it also makes one wonder whether such an engagement would be scientifically justified.