![handle is hein.journals/lvplr18 and id is 1 raw text is: The Liverpool Law Review Vol. XVIII(1) [1996]
CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY AND PRACTICE: RHETORIC,
REALITY AND RESEARCH
George Mair*
Criminal justice policy as opposed to criminal justice practice is a
remarkably under-developed area of study. The generic term social
policy is often assumed to include criminal justice policy, but you
will - on the whole - search in vain in social policy textbooks for
discussions of criminal justice topics. 1 Education, environment, health,
social security, employment, housing and the like are constantly being
analysed and debated by those who study social policy, but criminal
justice is ignored.
Why should this be so? One reason probably has to do with the
struggle of academic disciplines to map out and define a specific subject
area which then becomes that discipline's property. And so, when the
discipline which was known as social administration (which began to
develop around the beginning of the century associated with the Webbs,
Fabianism, and the London School of Economics) started to stake out
an academic place for itself, criminal justice had already been spoken for.
The discipline of criminology which had been developing since the
middle of the 19th century had delimited criminal justice as its area of
expertise - or it was assumed to have done so. But in fact, criminology
was not terribly interested in policy matters; it was far more interested in
developing scientific approaches to the study of crime and criminals.2
Criminal justice policy fell through a hole between the two disciplines.
It may also be relevant to note that the topics associated with social
policy were, initially at least, seen as purely benevolent - they were to
help the disadvantaged. On the other hand, criminal justice policy was
to do with offenders, to punish those who had broken the law. It can
* M.A., M.Sc., Ph.D., E. Rex Makin Professor of Criminal Justice, Liverpool
John Moores University.
1 See, for example, two classic texts: R.M. Titmuss, Social Policy: An
Introduction, Allen and Unwin, 1974, and T.H. Marshall, Social Policy in
the Twentieth Century, Hutchinson, 1975.
2 See D. Garland, Punishment and Welfare: a History of Penal Strategies,
Gower, 1985.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/lvplr18&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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