Criminal Justice challenges conventional understanding of crime, criminal justice and punishment by revealing their meanings to be open to multiple interpretations. It explores the historical contingency and cultural specificity of the institutions and practices of criminal justice. And it considers the many, often conflicting, roles fulfilled by the various players in the criminal process. In so doing, it reveals criminal justice to be more diverse and its purposes more contested than conventional accounts allow. The book concludes by asking whether radical changes in crime control and the pursuit of security, currently the subject of so much academic and political interest, signify the end of criminal justice as we know it.