ABSTRACT
This chapter critically engages with the emerging body of preventive justice literature, tracing its history and examining its utility as a framework for conceptualising and normatively limiting preventive governmental action. It argues that preventive justice scholarship has much to offer: it promotes critical engagement with the multifarious forms of prevention employed by governments, and exposes common issues in the operation of preventive measures. The chapter has identified a number of potential limitations, including the lack of precision regarding the content and scope of preventive justice, and uncertainty as to whether preventive practices are capable of being classified as part of a unified project. It has been argued that, following September 11, much of the currency of the preventive scholarship has related to anti-terror laws, and to a lesser extent sex offender laws. 'Preventive Justice' was coined by Blackstone, in the late eighteenth century, to describe an area of law devoted to prevent future crime.
