This article employs a governmentality framework to make sense of approaches to building public confidence, based upon a performance management regime that includes the British Crime Survey and a range of communicative technologies intended to raise public confidence. While there are two discursive threads running throughout that broadly correspond with models of crime control and due process, priority has been afforded at the level of governmental 'talk' to the crime control model. Reflecting upon the strengths and limitations of the governmentality framework, the article questions the likelihood of the crime control discourse being enacted in practice, as well as the appropriateness of such a policy emphasis. (Published Abstract) References