New Labour and criminal justice: Reflections on a wasteland of missed opportunity

At the time of writing, the New Labour project has ended and Labour has returned to the opposition benches. It came into power in 1997 bringing with it a general optimism about change for the better, and in particular, hope that the penal and criminal justice systems would be steered away from the punitive populism of the Tory years and towards new constructive and rational goals based on values such as fairness and benevolence. This paper reflects back on that hope and concludes that whilst some positive achievements were made, New Labour’s overall performance in this field must be judged not only as disappointing but also as a failure to grasp a historic opportunity to change the face of criminal justice.