"Crime, Risk and Uncertainty" investigates the alarming trend across Western societies of treating every imaginable source of harm as a crime. It locates this trend in the 21st century obsession with insecurity fostered by neo-liberal governments. It explains why selected issues of national security (threats of terrorism), social security (benefit system integrity), corporate security (liabilities for harm) and domestic security (anti-social behaviour) are at the top of the political agenda. It documents how this politics of insecurity leads to enormous expenditures on risk assessment and management that ironically reveal the limits of risk-based reasoning and intensify uncertainty. Catastrophic imaginations are fuelled, precautionary logics become pervasive, and extreme security measures are institutionalized. The security measures include the invention of disturbing new forms of 'counter law' or 'law against law'. Counter law criminalizes not only those who actually cause harm, but also those merely suspected of being harmful, as well as authorities who are deemed responsible for security failures.