ABSTRACT
The historical development of a state’s criminal justice system (CJS) can be viewed simply as a series of rational responses to ‘criminality’, as variously defined by successive governments through time. Alternatively, the CJS can be described as the policies of a political executive (be it monarch, chief minister, Council or Parliament) that happened to hold power during the period under review. Yet these are inadequate attempts to understand the meaning of criminal justice and punishment through the ages and they disguise rather than examine the underlying structural issues. They are particularly weak as explanations of policy because they fail to indicate the central importance of the theoretical models that historians and sociologists of state punishment have used to understand the development of a CJS, its administration, and the impact on governors and governed alike. This chapter will select a variety of state initiatives in penal policy from the medieval to the modern period and show how their development can be explained in their historical context.
