Introducing a radical shift in the research agenda of criminology, Braithwaite and Pettit here attack currently fashionable retributivist theories of punishment, arguing that the criminal justice system is so integrated that sentencing policy has to be considered in the system-wide context. They offer a comprehensive theory of criminal justice which points the way to practical intervention in the real world of incremental reform, and argue for a republican criminal justice system where the maximizing of individual dominion is set as the goal for progressive policy change.