This article examines the discrepancies between theories of risk and penality and emergent strategies of risk/need identification and management. Working back from the strategies themselves, I argue that the current generations of risk/need technologies are a significant departure from the pessimistic theoretical accounts of risk in criminal justice associated with the ‘new penology’ and ‘actuarial justice’. I argue that risk knowledges are fluid and flexible and capable of supporting a range of penal strategies. The evolution and meanings of risk in correctional assessment and classification are examined to show how understandings of risk have shifted from static to dynamic categorizations. I show how the concept of need is fused with risk, how particular conceptions of ‘need’ and ‘risk’ are situated in local penal narratives, how need reconstructs risk and revives correctional treatment as an efficient risk minimization strategy. I argue that strategic alignment of risk with narrowly defined intervenable needs contributes to the production of a transformative risk subject who unlike the ‘ fixed or static risk subject’ is amenable to targeted therapeutic interventions. Newly formed risk/needs categorizations and subsequent management strategies give rise to a new politics of punishment, in which different risk/needs groupings compete for limited resources, discredit collective group claims to resources, redistribute responsibilities for risk/needs management and legitimate both inclusive and exclusionary penal strategies.

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Expressions of masculinity in prison are most often characterized as being structured in response to an environment that encourages displays of stoicism, bravery, physical prowess and violence/aggression. However, we found that the antagonistic, precarious and risk-prone environment of the prison shapes prisoners' behaviours and the constitution of 'normative' and hegemonic masculinities in more nuanced ways than prior research suggests. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 56 male parolees, we explored how these men perceived and responded to risk while incarcerated, as well as how prison masculinities are linked with experiences and management of risk to their personal (legal, physical and emotional) safety. In this article, we focus on how prisoners mobilized and negotiated their masculine subjectivities to handle the uncertainty of imprisonment and the various risks they encountered in prison. We argue that penal risks and prison masculinities are mutually constitutive; risk is linked to perceptions of physical and emotional vulnerability, which shape prisoners' masculine embodiment.

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