This book provides an overview of recent government initiatives in the field of crime and punishment, reviewing both the policies themselves, the perceived problems and issues they seek to address, and the broader social and political context in which this is taking place. The underlying theme of the book is that a qualitative change has taken place in the politics of crime control in the UK since the early 1990s. Although crime has stabilised, imprisonment rates continue to climb, there is a new mood of punitiveness, and crime has become a central policy issue for the government, no longer ju.