![handle is hein.journals/lethics9 and id is 1 raw text is: Legal Ethics, Volume 9, No. 1
Editorial
ED CAPE AND JULIAN WEBB
Special Issue
The Ethics of Criminal Justice Professionals
in an Era of Change
During its tenure the present British government has been engaged in a root and branch re-
making of the criminal justice system.1 There are many strands and dimensions to this
transformation, and the policy objectives have been expressed in a variety of ways. A central
feature has been the assertion that the criminal justice system is out of balance, and the need
to rebalance the system in favour of victims, witnesses and communities, and variations on
this theme, has figured in many of the white papers, policy and strategy documents over the
near decade that the government has been in power.2 Central, too, has been the managerial-
ist concerns of economy and efficiency. One of the latest emanations from the Department
for Constitutional Affairs, Doing Law D i/frenily3 identifies as a key objective the re-
engineering [of] the criminal justice system to deliver a process that is much simpler, speed-
ier and in which summary justice plays a more significant part.4 Doing law differently
also means that the boundaries between the state and the judiciary are to be recalibrated,
and legal services are to be reshaped in order to ensure that they provide value for money
and are more responsive to the needs of the consumers of those services.
Whilst the government has articulated the direction of travel in a forthright manner, it has
been notably silent on the implications of its policies for the nature of the criminal justice
system. It may be that the pace and extent of change is so great that it will not be possible to
comprehend its consequences adequately for some time to come. Yet such fundamental
change presents serious ethical challenges for all criminal justice professionals, and the
demands of everyday practice mean that those professionals have to work out responses
and ways of working without waiting for comprehensive or theorised solutions to ethical
'1 M. Tonry, Punishmeni and Politics: Evidence and Eilation in the Making o'Engl'sh Crime Control Polic'
(Cullompton, WAillan, 2004), 5.
2 Scc, for cxamplc, Criminalju3sice: The Way Ahead, Cm 5074 (London, The Stationcry Office, 2001); Justice
fri All, Cm 5563 (London, TSO, 2002); and A Five Year Strategy fir Protetting the Pubhu and ?educing Re-offending,
Cm 6717 (London, TSO, 2006).
3 (London, DCA, April 2006), 4.
4 An aim cncapsulatcd in a grammatically challcngcd phrasc, simply, spccdy, summary.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/lethics9&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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