ABSTRACT
This chapter presents many contemporary aspects of criminal law and procedure are indeed best understood as opportunistic and politically expedient we would do well to understand these developments as recognition of changes in social relations which demand novel responses to the problems and conflicts these changes engender. Most of the useful theoretical work underpinning the analysis of a criminal attempt occurs in the Consultation Paper and it is this paper which will feature most heavily in the succeeding pages. Along with a systematic mapping of the range of criminal wrongdoing involved in attempts, crimes of ulterior intent, crimes of endangerment and regulatory crime, may finally deliver something approaching a rational mechanism for reconciling coercive law's retributive and protective functions. This chapter concludes that it would be rational to particularise two different forms of wrongdoing in order to achieve both retributive credibility and preventive efficacy.
