This text offers an overview of the changing understanding of crime and criminals, of criminal justice systems and penology, and of the tensions and dilemmas these pose for democratic societies.

Sir Leon Radzinowicz is one of the key figures in the development of criminology in the twentieth century, working as an academic criminologist, an adviser to government, and as the founding director of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge. This account of the development of criminology intertwines his personal narrative as a criminologist with the development of criminology itself. From a long career spanning 70 years from the 1920s to the present day, he offers a profound overview of the changing understanding of crime and criminals, of criminal justice systems and penology, and of the tensions and dilemmas these pose for democratic societies. His own work as a scholar, adviser to governments, and the founding director of the first criminological research institute in Britain results in this book offering a uniquely well informed account of the intellectual and institutional history of criminology in Britain and Europe, and its place within a wider comparative perspective.