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Andrew Ashworth and Lucia Zedner, PREVENTIVE JUSTICE Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com ), 2014. xix + 306 pp. ISBN 9780198712527. £50.

Document Cited in Related
AuthorJames Chalmers
DOI10.3366/elr.2015.0288
Published date01 May 2015
Date01 May 2015
Pages294-295

Criminal law theory has difficulty in accommodating much of what is done by the modern state in the criminal context, difficulties which are especially stark where the state seeks not to respond to crime but to prevent it, sometimes invoking the civil process rather than the criminal. One response might be to argue that theoretical perspectives on criminal law need not address such devices. Regulatory offences are not really criminal law; preventive orders imposed by criminal courts are subversions of it; preventive orders imposed by civil courts have nothing to do with it – unless, at least, they are properly to be regarded as punitive in nature and so a disguised attempt to use the criminal law while circumventing the procedural protections normally attendant on it.

Such a response may be legitimate on its own terms, and criminal law theory's coherence may be all the better for it. But the broad reach of the preventive state is a reality, and one where there is an anxious need for proper work on its scope, theoretical underpinnings and...

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