Preventive Justice

Andrew Ashworth is Vinerian Professor of English Law Emeritus in the University of Oxford, a member of the Centre for Criminology and a Fellow of All Souls College. Until 2010 he was chair of the Sentencing Advisory Panel for England and Wales. He co-directed (with Professor Lucia Zedner) a three-year study of Preventive Justice, generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is General Editor of the Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice, and is a former editor (and now active editorial board member) of the Criminal Law Review. Lucia Zedner is Professor of Criminal Justice in the Faculty of Law and a member of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford. With Andrew Ashworth, Professor Zedner co-directed a three-year study of Preventive Justice generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is also Conjoint Professor, Faculty of Law University of New South Wales, Sydney. Lucia Zedner is former General Editor and a member of the Editorial Board of the Clarendon Studies in Criminology Series published by Oxford University Press and she serves on the editorial boards of several criminal law and criminology journals.

This is not, and could not have been, the last word on the subject. As the authors themselves acknowledge in their conclusion, many of the principles they identify are open-textured in nature and require to be worked through in detail in relation to each sphere of application, while questions of weight, tensions and conflicts may also pose difficulty. The principles will, however, allow academics and policymakers to identify more clearly just what questions should be asked and what factors should be relevant to individual decisions and broader structures, something well illustrated by the authorsâ criticism of the Independent Reviewerâs reliance on considerations of economy in evaluating terrorism prevention and investigative measures. The authorsâ work is simultaneously groundbreaking and of direct practical application, and deserving of considerable praise.

• 1. Introduction: the State and Coercive Preventive Measures ; 2. The Historical Origins of the Preventive State ; 3. Prevention, Policing and Criminal Procedure ; 4. Civil Preventive Orders ; 5. Preventive Offences in the Criminal Law: Rationales and Limits ; 6. Risk Assessment and the Preventive Role of the Criminal Court ; 7. Preventive Detention of the Dangerous ; 8. Counter-Terrorism Laws and Security Measures ; 9. Public Health Law, Prevention and Liberty ; 10. Prevention and Immigration Laws ; 11. Conclusions: the Preventive State and its Proper Limits ; Bibliography