Under the expression the new penology, changes in penalty in the USA are commonly analysed as indicators of the transition from punishment – or individual treatment – central penologies towards one which is centred on the supervision and control of groups regarded as posing a risk to others. This transition seems to anticipate the emergence of a new model of justice, actuarial justice. similar trends are emerging in Europe, but their novelty should be reconsidered against the background of technological progress and the dying out of the social purposes of punishment. These changes are however part and parcel of this another transition, towards of the Welfare State, the Securitarian State, where security becomes an end in itself and penalty an instrument of regulation within a policy of risk-reduction, mainly with regard to the socially and economically unproductive.