Risk Balance and Security

Key Features: Links theoretical ideas with real world examples: The authors clearly present how the concept of risk is constructed in modern society and the implications for developing strategies to maximize security. Provides an interdisciplinary treatment of risk: Ideas from several disciplines are merged to capture more fully the realities of public security today. Illustrates applications of real-life solutions to security problems: Readers learn how agencies are dealing with specific threats to security in contemporary societies. Compares individual-level and institutional-level assessments of risk and safety: These divergences enable readers to appreciate the complexities of establishing security in different settings.

In confronting risk, individuals and all agencies cannot simply respond with endless resources in mitigating the damage that hazards engender-they have to establish a balance. Risk Balance and Security combines the conceptual underpinnings of risk assessment and management at both the individual and agency level with a clear analysis of how these relate to challenges faced in responding to crime, terrorism, public health threats, and environmental disasters. With a new understanding of how decisions are made about threats and hazards, and how this understanding may be applied in our preparedness, prevention, and response strategies, we will be able to better conceptualize our task for enhancing security in the future.

Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Calgary, Canada. She received her BA and MA in Sociology from the University of Calgary, and her PhD from the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on the concept of risk as it primarily applies to criminal offending and victimization. Her current research projects include an examination of how past experiences with various types of hazards influence self-protective behavior and expectations for the future, and the means by which individual and institutional efforts to enhance security work together and/or at cross-purposes. She has published articles in such journals as the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, Alberta Journal of Educational Research, Women and Criminal Justice, British Journal of Criminology and has made major contributions in books such as Juvenile Delinquency by Creechan and Silverman; Crime in Canadian Society 6^{th edition by Silverman, Teevan, and Sacco; The Process and Structure of Crime by Meier, Kennedy, and Sacco; and the Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment by Levinson.}