Prevention And The Limits Of The Criminal Law

Exploring the principles and values that should guide and limit the state's use of preventive techniques that involve coercion against the individual, this volume arises from a three-year study of Preventive Justice. The contributions examine whether and when preventive measures are justified, whether within or outwith the criminal law, and whether they signal a larger change in the architecture of security. Preventive measures include controversial crime control approaches such as pre-inchoate offences, pre-trial detention, restraining orders, and prevention detention of the dangerous. There are good reasons to justify state use of coercion to protect the public from harm, but while the rationales and justifications for state punishment have been extensively explored, the scope, limits, and principles of preventive justice have not received the same attention. This volume, written by world renowned scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and jurisdictions, redresses the balance, assessing the foundations for the range of coercive measures that states now take in the name of prevention and public protection.

The argument of this book begins with the proposition that there are certain things we must understand about the criminal sanction before we can begin to talk sensibly about its limits. First, we need to ask some questions about the rationale of the criminal sanction. What are we trying to do by defining conduct as criminal and punishing people who commit crimes? To what extent are we justified in thinking that we can or ought to do what we are trying to do? Is it possible to construct an acceptable rationale for the criminal sanction enabling us to deal with the argument that it is itself an unethical use of social power? And if it is possible, what implications does that rationale have for the kind of conceptual creature that the criminal law is? Questions of this order make up Part I of the book, which is essentially an extended essay on the nature and justification of the criminal sanction. We also need to understand, so the argument continues, the characteristic processes through which the criminal sanction operates. What do the rules of the game tell us about what the state may and may not do to apprehend, charge, convict, and dispose of persons suspected of committing crimes? Here, too, there is great controversy between two groups who have quite different views, or models, of what the criminal process is all about. There are people who see the criminal process as essentially devoted to values of efficiency in the suppression of crime. There are others who see those values as subordinate to the protection of the individual in his confrontation with the state. A severe struggle over these conflicting values has been going on in the courts of this country for the last decade or more. How that struggle is to be resolved is a second major consideration that we need to take into account before tackling the question of the limits of the criminal sanction. These problems of process are examined in Part II. Part III deals directly with the central problem of defining criteria for limiting the reach of the criminal sanction. Given the constraints of rationale and process examined in Parts I and II, it argues that we have over-relied on the criminal sanction and that we had better start thinking in a systematic way about how to adjust our commitments to our capacities, both moral and operational.

'Preventative Justice' looks at the use of coercive preventive measures by the state, both within and beyond criminal law. Examining preventive laws, measures, and institutions in and outside the criminal law, it explores the justifications given for using coercion to protect the public from harm.

The United States today suffers from too much criminal law and too much punishment. Husak describes the phenomena in some detail and explores their relation, and why these trends produce massive injustice. His primary goal is to defend a set of constraints that limit the authority of states to enact and enforce penal offenses. The book urges the weight and relevance of this topic in the real world, and notes that most Anglo-American legal philosophers have neglected it. Husak's secondary goal is to situate this endeavor in criminal theory as traditionally construed. He argues that many of the resources to reduce the size and scope of the criminal law can be derived from within the criminal law itself-even though these resources have not been used explicitly for this purpose. Additional constraints emerge from a political view about the conditions under which important rights such as the right implicated by punishment-may be infringed. When conjoined, these constraints produce what Husak calls a minimalist theory of criminal liability. Husak applies these constraints to a handful of examples-most notably, to the justifiability of drug proscriptions.

Through a theoretical examination of the preventive turn in criminal law and justice which has gained momentum in Anglo-American criminal justice systems since the late-twentieth century, this work demonstrates how recent transformations in criminal law and justice are intrinsically related to and embedded in the way liberal society and liberal law have been imagined, developed, and conditioned by its social, political, and historical context. Henrique Carvalho identifies a tension between the idea of punishment as an expression of individual justice, and prevention as a manifestation of the need for security and the promotion of welfare. Tracing this tension back to an intrinsic ambivalence within the modern conception of individual liberty, which is both repressed and preserved by liberal conceptions of responsibility and punishment, Carvalho proves that as long as this ambivalence remains unexamined, liberal law has the potential to both promote and undermine individual justice. Engaging with the dominant contemporary literature on criminal law, prevention, risk, security, and criminalisation, this volume deploys a theoretical perspective developed through a critical analysis of both classical and contemporary works of social and political theory. The book reveals that the pervasiveness of prevention in 21st century criminal justice systems represents not only the consequence of new and unprecedented features of contemporary politics and society, but also the manifestation of essential aspects of the liberal legal and political tradition --Front flap of book.

Like medicine, law is replete with axioms of prevention. ‘Prevention is better than cure’ has a long pedigree in both fields. 17th century jurist Sir Edward Coke observed that ‘preventing justice excelleth punishing justice’. A century later, Sir William Blackstone similarly stated that ‘preventive justice is ...preferable in all respects to punishing justice’. This book evaluates the feasibility and legitimacy of state attempts to regulate prevention. Though prevention may be desirable as a matter of policy, questions are inevitably raised as to its limits and legitimacy, specifically, how society reconciles the desirability of averting risks of future harm with respect for the rule of law, procedural fairness and human rights. While these are not new questions for legal scholars, they have been brought into sharper relief in policy and academic circles in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Over the past 15 years, a body of legal scholarship has tracked the intensified preventive focus of anti-terrorism law and policy, observing how this focus has impacted negatively upon traditional legal frameworks. However, preventive law and policy in other contexts, such as environmental protection, mental health, immigration and corruption has not received sustained focus. This book extends that body of scholarship, through use of case studies from these diverse regulatory settings, in order to examine and critique the principles, policies and paradoxes of preventive justice. "Whereas earlier scholars looked upon preventive justice as a source and means of regulation, the powerfully argued contributions to this volume provide forceful reasons to consider whether we would do better talk about regulating preventive justice." Professor Lucia Zedner, Oxford University

"Since the late 20th century many Western jurisdictions introduced a range of civil preventive measures in order to prevent and deal with various types of criminality. Although the stated objective of these interventions is the prevention of crime, their implementation can result in the imposition of restrictions akin to criminal punishment leading to the indirect criminalisation of certain kinds of behaviour. Through the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach which combines criminal law theory and empirical criminology, this book engages with the phenomenon of indirect criminalisation using as a case study the legal framework on anti-social behaviour in England and Wales. It engages with central questions within legal theory: - what are the normative challenges posed by indirect criminalisation and mechanisms for distinguishing criminal from non-criminal rules? - how can such questions be tested and applied empirically? - has the ASBO's successor been operating as de facto criminal measure?"--

In 1990 when Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi published A General Theory of Crime, now often referred to as self control theory, it quickly became among the most discussed and researched perspectives in criminology. In Modern Control Theory and the Limits of Criminal Justice, Gottfredson and Hirschi develop and extend the theory of self control advanced in their classic work. Focusing on the methodology of testing crime theory and measuring behavioral research on crime and delinquency, they critically review the evidence about self control theory. Gottfredson and Hirschi further discuss evidence about the positive consequences of higher levels of self control from education, economics, and public health, that-along with evidence from delinquency and crime-show substantial support for the theory of self control. Illustrating the theory through predictions about policing, incarceration, juvenile justice, and the connection of immigration policy to crime, this book connects self control theory to the structure and function of the criminal justice system, then applies the theory to pressing issues of public policy about delinquency and crime.