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.

Andrew Ashworth is Vinerian Professor of English Law 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 is co-directing (with Professor Lucia Zedner) a three-year study of Preventive Justice, generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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. She is currently the General Editor of the Oxford University Press monograph series Clarendon Studies in Criminology. With Andrew Ashworth, Professor Zedner is currently co-directing 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, where she is a regular visitor.

Patrick Tomlin is Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Reading. Prior to taking up this post in January 2012, he was a postdoctoral researcher on the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded Preventive Justice project at the University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.