This study inaugurates a new field of critical criminal law research. Public perceptions of crime are permeated with the image of dangerous activities and of the dangerous people who perpetrate them: gangsters, terrorists, murderers and sex offenders being the most prominent examples. Likewise, a growing number of criminal offences rely on the dangerous status of their object as basis for criminalisation, from the use of dangerous dogs, weapons and substances to activities such as dangerous driving. Prosecutors also often rely on images of dangerousness to convince juries of the defendants’ guilt and criminal character. However, when it comes to criminal law theory and doctrine, dangerousness becomes mostly invisible, dismissed as a manifestation of emotional appeals to populism in place of the rationalism of the law. In not acknowledging the influence dangerousness has on criminalisation, and how this influence contributes to perpetuating discrimination, marginalisation and miscarriages of justice in society, criminal law scholarship preserves a misconceived idea of itself that has significant practical repercussions.

‘The Dangerous Essence of Criminal Law’ unsettles criminal law scholarship by advancing the original proposition that dangerousness should be placed at the centre of the conceptual framework of criminal law. Through an innovative interdisciplinary methodology, this project advances a thicker conception of dangerousness which is inherently linked to a specific notion of civil order, which the criminal law strives to preserve by defining and then repressing those values, activities and identities that pose a threat to this order. In so doing, this study tackles criminal law scholarship’s failure to come to terms with the real dynamics of criminalisation and uncovers a new vision of the socio-political role of the criminal law, which engages with recent developments in a way that illuminates how processes of criminalisation relate to issues of identity, solidarity, structural violence and social exclusion.