ABSTRACT
This book presents a series of valuable essays on decision-making in criminal justice which draw attention to a rich set of features found in some of the less considered areas in which legal officials make profoundly important choices. Criminal justice decision-making is a species of legal decision-making generally, and these essays explore processes observable in other arenas of legal life. In a variety of studies, by a variety of hands, and with a variety of methods, many common themes emerge which deserve further reflection. The emphasis in the present book on decision-making in neglected, mostly post-conviction, sites of criminal justice is very welcome. I intend to focus in particular upon issues arising from two of the questions which Loraine Gelsthorpe and Nicola Padfield pose at the beginning of their Introduction: how discretion is exercised in different parts of the criminal justice system, and what may actually constrain it. In doing so, I shall suggest some lines for further enquiry. I take as self-evident the importance of understanding legal decision-making in its different arenas, for the practical reality of law, and its consequences, reside in the ways in which its words are translated into action.
