This is a book about what and who should be treated as criminal under the law and the ways that this can be justified. The approach engages with, but is quite different to, much contemporary work being done on ‘criminalization’, which largely deploys the tools of moral and political philosophy. Instead, it connects thinking about criminalization to the development of the modern criminal law as a distinct body of rules and argues that this is connected to the emergence of the modern state in which the criminal law is seen as an instrument of government. The book thus restores a historical conte ... More

This is a book about what and who should be treated as criminal under the law and the ways that this can be justified. The approach engages with, but is quite different to, much contemporary work being done on ‘criminalization’, which largely deploys the tools of moral and political philosophy. Instead, it connects thinking about criminalization to the development of the modern criminal law as a distinct body of rules and argues that this is connected to the emergence of the modern state in which the criminal law is seen as an instrument of government. The book thus restores a historical context to an often ahistorical framing of these fundamental issues of governance. The book is in three main parts. The first develops an account of criminal law as an institution, arguing in particular that that the modern criminal law should be understood as an institution for securing civil order. The second then traces the emergence and development of the modern criminal law and the way that criminalization has been understood. It does this by looking at the development of key institutional dimensions of the criminal law, such as jurisdiction, codification and responsibility. The third part of the book then engages in detailed analysis of the development of specific categories of criminal law, looking at patterns of criminalization in relation to property offences, offences against the person, and sexual offences.