The motivations to write a book titled The Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Societies came from a variety of sources, but from one in particular. Over the years, in our roles as university teachers in social policy and criminology, we have observed growing numbers of students pursuing studies in subjects such as psychology and criminal justice as distinct from sociology and social policy, a trend already noted by Jock Young in his 2011 book The Criminological Imagination. This trend is probably a consequence of the increasingly dominant perception in wider society that the ‘solutions’ to crime and poverty are more likely to reside in ‘fixing individuals’ through criminal justice and other social interventions, and not in the redistribution of wealth and income, sound policy-making, good working conditions or comprehensive welfare provision for all. After graduation, criminology and social policy students enter into professions (as social workers, probation officers, youth workers, community workers and so on) where they are, in turn, increasingly expected to service the public at large by fixing and moulding individuals enough to assume productive roles in an unequal social and economic order. In response to, and in order to counter such practices, this book seeks to contribute to the rich body of academic work, across the academic disciplines of social policy and criminology and their related professions, which challenges these dominant perspectives and approaches (Ferguson, 2008; Young, 2011; Levitas, 2012; Featherstone et al, 2014a; Williams, 2016; Gupta, 2018). It calls for greater intellectual commitment to the integration of critical strands within criminology and social policy in the interests of better serving those at the margins of society, while at the same time working towards more radical societal transformation that can result in more just and equal societies, that are respectful of individual human rights for everyone. In writing the book and in each individual chapter, we have maintained our sights on the reality of the lived experience of policy subjects, individuals and families who are in receipt of welfare or who are caught in the interstices of welfare and criminal justice policy.