Book review: Henrique Carvalho, The Preventive Turn in Criminal Law
| Author | Lucia Zedner |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480618789213 |
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
606 Theoretical Criminology 22(4)
Henrique Carvalho, The Preventive Turn in Criminal Law, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2017;
224 pp.: 9780198737858, £60.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Lucia Zedner, University of Oxford, UK
The Preventive Turn of this book’s title refers to a phenomenon that has attracted consid-
erable academic interest in recent years—the perceived shift from punishment to preven-
tion. This move is exemplified by the expansion of inchoate and pre-inchoate criminal
liability, preventive policing and preventive detention, as well parallel developments in
counter-terrorism and immigration control (Janus, 2004; Krasmann, 2007; Steiker,
1998). In tackling these developments, Carvalho is entering crowded terrain: as Steiker
(1998: 774) observed as early as 1998, ‘[t]he preventive state is all the rage these days’.
For good reason: the preventive turn undermines due process values and rule of law
principles, not least by characterizing serious offenders as risky, predatory or dangerous
people for whom full trial rights and proportional punishment may be eroded or even
relinquished in favour of pre-trial, extended or indefinite detention.
Carvalho’s book adeptly challenges many assumptions of the current debate by re-inter-
preting the impact of the preventive turn to show that it is a less novel and more enduring
facet of criminal law than many commentators allow. The book calls into question claims
of the ‘rise of the preventive state’ by showing that, while recourse to preventive and secu-
rity laws and measures has grown in recent years, prevention is an enduring goal of crimi-
nalization and security a recurring motif in the history of political and legal theory.
Most importantly, The Preventive Turn contests the broad consensus that the threats
posed by the preventive turn are best tackled and the legal system best defended by reas-
serting liberal values of individual autonomy, liberty and responsibility.1 It challenges
the tendency to characterize prevention as external and inimical to liberal criminal law
by showing that the spur to prevention is not independent of liberalism but rather ‘the
preventive turn might have its roots within liberal law itself’ (p. 11). On this view, to
suggest that the threat of security-driven laws and measures can be restrained by re-
asserting liberal values is to fail to acknowledge that the problem of prevention derives
and is inseparable from liberal ideology. By dint of a sustained exploration of classical
liberal theories, Carvalho shows that, while individual autonomy lies at the heart of lib-
eralism, it is also a deeply problematic aspect of it. So, ‘individual liberty […] is at the
same time the main premise of the liberal social project, and the main threat to it’ (p. 12),
not least because the untrammelled exercise of individual autonomy has the potential to
endanger the interests of others. As such, it poses a serious risk to security and thus to the
very enjoyment of liberty.
Carvalho succeeds in laying bare these deep tensions by considering the broad range
of ideas that fall under the umbrella of liberalism and showing how classical theories of
liberalism still underpin the state and inform the legal system today. To explore and
elaborate their importance, the book explores at length and in depth the history of politi-
cal theory and its implications for criminalization. It ranges with great facility over 300
years of writings in political and legal theory, from Hobbes, through Locke, Hegel,
Bentham and to the work of TH Marshall, RA Duff and others in the present day. The
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