ABSTRACT
Like other contributors to this volume, I am concerned about the balance between ‘reducing risk’ and ‘doing justice’ as criminal justice objectives. In my own recent work, and in my engagement with criminal justice agencies such as the probation service, I have expressed the anxiety that ‘justice’ is something of an endangered concept in the UK, USA, and other similar societies (Hudson, 2000). Apart from a few members of the judiciary, legal theorists, philosophers, and some human rights specialists and civil libertarians, our societies seem to be losing sight of the importance of justice as a regulative ideal.
