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So-called enemy penology is the invention of a German professor of criminal law. In a Foucauldian perspective, however, it turns out not to be a singular phenomenon. Instead it is a programme asserting itself as a strategy for solving contemporary security problems; it also assumes its place among developments that should be seen in the national as well as in the international area of criminal justice and security policy. These developments provoke a transformation of the constitutional state, challenging its hitherto valid principles and rearranging the relation between violence and right. This transformation occurs surreptitiously, since the security strategies promoting it do not appear violent, but, instead, preventive. They are based on a demarcation making certain distinctions — like those between a threatening enemy and a population that has to be protected — possible and appear unambiguous. Enemy penology is exemplary of prevailing tendencies in security policies, going all the way to Guantánamo. In the following, these will be read in a Foucauldian perspective as a renaissance of sovereign power in the name of population management.

For several years now, crime prediction software operating on the basis of data analysis and algorithmic pattern detection has been employed by police departments throughout the world. As these technologies aim at forestalling criminal events, they may aptly be understood as elements of preventive strategies. Do they also initiate a logic of preemptive policing, as several authors have suggested? Using the example of crime prediction software that is used in German-speaking countries, the article shows how current forms of predictive policing echo classical modes of risk calculation: usually employed in connection with domestic burglary, they help police to identify potential high-risk areas by extrapolating past crime patterns into the future. However, preemptive elements also emerge, to the extent that the software fosters 'possibilistic' thinking in police operations. Moreover, current advances in crime prediction technologies give us a quite different picture of a probable future of preemptive policing. Following a general trend of data-driven government that draws on self-learning algorithms and heterogeneous data sources, crime prediction software will likely be integrated into assemblages of predictive technologies where criminal events are indeed foreclosed before they can unfold and emerge, implying preemptive police action.

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The emergence of ‘situational awareness’ as a response to the perception of a new terrorism in European cities marks a significant shift in the conceptualization of security. Focusing on a recently introduced German Federal Police programme that trains ordinary officers in their capability to handle ‘complex life-threatening situations of police operation’, the article explores how situational awareness introduces a warrior logic into policing and urban subjectivity and modifies our understanding of security at large. It points us to the limitations of preparedness and concretizes the hitherto elusive call to resilience. Three analytical dimensions – space–time, sensing and connectivity – will be developed to render the situation thinkable for empirical research as well as to grasp security as a ‘live’ mode of government.