Despite being faced with a general crisis in traditional norms, statute-law has not lost its attraction, as evidenced by increasing calls for legal regulation. In order to reinforce its legitimacy, the legal system usually favours a rapid response which reassures the public by concentrating on immediate and visible criminal-law measures. Such responses give rise to a constant state of emergency within the criminal law, and to the proliferation of exceptional rules and derogations. This in turn weakens the symbolic resources of the normal system of criminal justice, and causes a growing divergence between the inflexibility of statute and the fluidity of day-to-day practice. The visibility of a legal response thus takes priority over its real substance. This discloses an inner truth of the management-based model, in which statute-law – because it has not been understood within the bounds of its own serious limitations – turns back pathologically upon itself.