For most of the past two centuries, the institutions of criminal justice have been predominantly agencies of or accountable to government (be it local, state, or national). That is not to deny or ignore the presence or influence of privatization. But because government is usually the main source of funding and oversight, how we conceive of governmental power influences how we view such institutions and their processes, and the resources upon which we draw when we seek to justify them. The justificatory framework for this volume is broadly “liberal democratic” – that is, it views the role of the institutions of criminal justice in terms of “social peacekeeping” rather than of “pacification.” It sees, in other words, the institutions of criminal justice as securing public rather than merely state interests. But to say one takes a “liberal democratic” approach is to speak in fairly broad terms. There is no single way of being liberal and democratic, and the institutions and processes of criminal justice found in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia differ in many and sometimes quite significant ways, though not necessarily in ways that diminish their liberal democratic claims. Their histories (and to some extent their geographies) are sufficiently different to have given rise to what are often quite distinctive ways of being liberal and democratic.