Review "An example of the best of political and organizational sociology....The book is theoretically informed, creatively written, and filled with intellectually satisfying insight. It deserves a space on the bookshelves of organizational scholars, government practitioners, and all who retain a curiosityabout the often hidden courses of governmental decision making."--International Social Science Review"An excellent book, a contribution of considerable importance to the literature on public policy, and a rare observational study of the transformation of vague stirrings about an issue into a government initiative. The book is the product of extraordinarily shrewd observation...the kind of bookthat should be remembered and cited long after the endless array of ephemeral emprical tracts are gathering dust."--British Journal of Criminology Product Description Possibly the first ethnographic study of policy-making in a Justice Ministry, this is a detailed empirical investigation of the evolution of the Canadian Federal Ministry of the Solicitor General's Justice for Victims of Crime Initiative. Tracing the beginnings of the initiative in theAmerican victims' movement and academic victimology, it also discusses the work of senior Civil Servants who imported ideas about victims into the Ministry, and examines the development of those ideas in the context of debates about capital punishment, the reform of policing, and violence againstwomen.