Crime and Social Justice No. 19 continues the new format and debates begun last year in No. 17. We are pleased to report that our new perspective and format have received a very positive response from both readers and contributors. We are receiving new contributions from new contributors, which gives CSJ a much-needed breadth of focus, a renewed ideological exchange, and political vitality.

With this issue, we continue to focus on the crisis in social policy, in particular the necessity for progressive activists and intellectuals to develop programmatic and tactical alternatives to the right-wing politics of "law and order." We continue this debate (begun in No. 17 with Bertram Gross' article, "Some Anticrime Proposals for Progressives") with contributions from a criminology collective in Australia (involving both academics and activists) and from Raymond Michalowski, Ronald Boostrom, and Joel Henderson on the situation in the United States.

The failure of the Left to develop a progressive agenda is reflected in the ideological and theoretical confusion that permeates criminology, as well as in the absence of program. Commenting on various aspects of the crisis in theory, this issue includes Ratner and McMullan's article on the "exceptional state"; Stigliano's thoughtful reevaluation of Sartre's contribution to "understanding violence"; an article by Clarke on the ideological reproduction of "law and order" in the British media; a critique by Hinch of the "clutter" of radical criminology in the 1970s; and a critique by Huggins of the liberal perspective on comparative aspects of crime and criminal justice.

Rounding out this issue are Ray's assessment of the neoconservative Right; a prisoner's trenchant observations about life inside and outside the walls; an interesting report from Martin about academic repression in Australia; an update on the "Kiko" Martínez case; and reviews of books on comparative criminology, the pharmaceutical industry, and the centennial anniversary of Karl Marx's death.

All in all, this is a lively and diverse issue, which reflects the revitalization of progressive criminology in the 1980s.