ABSTRACT
The methodological and theoretical problems in the position have been pursued relentlessly enough, and most of the warnings against the drift toward an ahistorical subjectivism are surely justified. In classical criminology the moral fit between the image of the criminal and the nature of criminal policy was reasonably close. And the moral judgments in the debates about what the law should prohibit and how individual offenders should be punished were open and transparent. The current justice debate is a major breakthrough, and there are two other roads within critical criminology now that offer routes back to the moral dimensions of criminal politics. There is one familiar criminological debate that might be used to open up the question of guilt and responsibility to such policy considerations: the theory of "techniques of neutralization". Most radical criminologists seem aware of this problem and of the central strategic importance of the justice debate.
