This article is an attempt at improving the knowledge base on the criminal justice policy-making process. As the criminological subfield of crime policy leads more criminologists to engage in policy analysis, understanding the policy-making environment in all of its complexity becomes more central to criminology. This becomes an important step toward theorizing the policy process. To advance this enterprise, policy-oriented criminologists might look to theoretical and conceptual frameworks that have established histories in the political and policy sciences. This article presents a contextual approach to examine the criminal justice policy-making environment and its accompanying process. The principal benefit of this approach is its emphasis on addressing the complexity inherent to policy contexts. For research on the policy process to advance, contextually sensitive methods of policy inquiry must be formulated and should illuminate the social reality of criminal justice policy making through the accumulation of knowledge both of and in the policy process.

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