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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

From 1997 to 2001, the Chilean government enacted laws to transform its criminal justice system from one using a closed and secretive inquisitorial-type process to one employing a more open and transparent adversarial process. These criminal procedure reforms significantly changed the roles of lower court judges, prosecutors and public defenders and provided defendants and victims with broader individual rights. Despite its commitment to criminal law reforms, during the implementation period of these reforms, the government remained lackluster in its commitment to a more open and transparent justice system when it related to more politicized cases. During the criminal law reform implementation process, the government was hesitant to prosecute high-level Pinochet-era officials while adamant about prosecuting individuals who criticized the judiciary. Not until the government had significantly improved the lower level criminal procedures was there a change in the way that the government dealt with the prosecution of high-level officials under the Pinochet regime and with individuals criticizing the judiciary itself. This paper explores the connection between the government's commitment to lower level criminal law reforms and its policy switch in dealing with more politicized cases.