From Inquest:
In her 2003 presidential address to the Association of American Geographers, Susan Cutter proposed a “science of vulnerability.” Building on the multidisciplinary tradition of hazards research, she argues that vulnerability science requires spatial solutions, because “vulnerability manifests itself geographically in the form of hazardous places.”
Vulnerability, generally speaking, means the potential or risk for loss. Losses in population vary geographically and over time. Social vulnerability, a concept from environmental science, is the degree to which a system, subsystem, or system component is likely to experience harm due to exposure to a hazard, either a perturbation or a stress/stressor. Researchers in environmental science examine how communities are particularly vulnerable (or resilient) to external shocks such as natural disasters, assuming that vulnerability is a social condition and a measure of societal resistance or resilience to hazards.
Typically, though, researchers focus on the vulnerability of individuals or groups rather than the vulnerability of certain places to potential hazards. Thus, in this final discussion I wish to promote a science of punishment vulnerability, in which I consider intense formal social control as a hazard akin to industrial waste, toxins, floods, and natural disaster. In other words, I ask what makes people — and the places where they live — vulnerable to violent, harsh, or deadly crime control events, and how could vulnerability and resilience be measured, monitored, and assessed in the field of criminal justice policy? Continue reading >>>
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