Like medicine, law is replete with axioms of prevention. ‘Prevention is better than cure’ has a long pedigree in both fields. 17th century jurist Sir Edward Coke observed that ‘preventing justice excelleth punishing justice’. A century later, Sir William Blackstone similarly stated that ‘preventive justice is ...preferable in all respects to punishing justice’. This book evaluates the feasibility and legitimacy of state attempts to regulate prevention. Though prevention may be desirable as a matter of policy, questions are inevitably raised as to its limits and legitimacy, specifically, how society reconciles the desirability of averting risks of future harm with respect for the rule of law, procedural fairness and human rights. While these are not new questions for legal scholars, they have been brought into sharper relief in policy and academic circles in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Over the past 15 years, a body of legal scholarship has tracked the intensified preventive focus of anti-terrorism law and policy, observing how this focus has impacted negatively upon traditional legal frameworks. However, preventive law and policy in other contexts, such as environmental protection, mental health, immigration and corruption has not received sustained focus. This book extends that body of scholarship, through use of case studies from these diverse regulatory settings, in order to examine and critique the principles, policies and paradoxes of preventive justice. "Whereas earlier scholars looked upon preventive justice as a source and means of regulation, the powerfully argued contributions to this volume provide forceful reasons to consider whether we would do better talk about regulating preventive justice." Professor Lucia Zedner, Oxford University

Preventative Justice looks at the use of coercive preventive measures by the state, both within and beyond criminal law. Examining preventive laws, measures, and institutions in and outside the criminal law, it explores the justifications given for using coercion to protect the public from harm.

Like medicine, law is replete with axioms of prevention. ‘Prevention is better than cure’ has a long pedigree in both fields. 17th century jurist Sir Edward Coke observed that ‘preventing justice excelleth punishing justice’. A century later, Sir William Blackstone similarly stated that ‘preventive justice is ...preferable in all respects to punishing justice’. This book evaluates the feasibility and legitimacy of state attempts to regulate prevention. Though prevention may be desirable as a matter of policy, questions are inevitably raised as to its limits and legitimacy, specifically, how society reconciles the desirability of averting risks of future harm with respect for the rule of law, procedural fairness and human rights. While these are not new questions for legal scholars, they have been brought into sharper relief in policy and academic circles in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Over the past 15 years, a body of legal scholarship has tracked the intensified preventive focus of anti-terrorism law and policy, observing how this focus has impacted negatively upon traditional legal frameworks. However, preventive law and policy in other contexts, such as environmental protection, mental health, immigration and corruption has not received sustained focus. This book extends that body of scholarship, through use of case studies from these diverse regulatory settings, in order to examine and critique the principles, policies and paradoxes of preventive justice. "Whereas earlier scholars looked upon preventive justice as a source and means of regulation, the powerfully argued contributions to this volume provide forceful reasons to consider whether we would do better talk about regulating preventive justice." Professor Lucia Zedner, Oxford University

Exploring the principles and values that should guide and limit the state's use of preventive techniques that involve coercion against the individual, this volume arises from a three-year study of Preventive Justice. The contributions examine whether and when preventive measures are justified, whether within or outwith the criminal law, and whether they signal a larger change in the architecture of security. Preventive measures include controversial crime control approaches such as pre-inchoate offences, pre-trial detention, restraining orders, and prevention detention of the dangerous. There are good reasons to justify state use of coercion to protect the public from harm, but while the rationales and justifications for state punishment have been extensively explored, the scope, limits, and principles of preventive justice have not received the same attention. This volume, written by world renowned scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and jurisdictions, redresses the balance, assessing the foundations for the range of coercive measures that states now take in the name of prevention and public protection.

Part Two. HUMAN RIGHTS

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.