Risk has had a very bad press in most social theory and critical criminology, especially after 9-11. This paper argues that such criticism may be misplaced insofar as risk is an extremely variable governmental technology, and that most of the features that are of concern are shaped by the contemporary adverse political environment. The same environment has given a similar negative cast to other approaches to security. It is suggested that there are ways of deploying risk, such as drug harm minimization, that offer considerable promise for linking risk and security, and more broadly to issues of social justice. However, abstract calls for harm minimizing security, suffer exactly the same problems that confront generalizing about risk-based security. This paper suggests that we could use a governmental analytic to construct a strategic knowledge of risk, both through the analysis of existing approaches (such as harm minimization and restorative justice) and by using this to generate experiments in risk, security and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]