On Civil Order in Happy Valley Criminal Justice and the Vindicatory Complex

This is a case study of how civil order is fashioned and made morally plausible. It focuses on the first series of the BBC crime drama Happy Valley . In this moral tale of modern criminal life, criminal justice, central to the modern civil order, is organised around law's ‘vindicatory complex’. This semi-organised, structural problematic renders plausible an account of criminal justice and civil order as an ethical whole yet is organised around a false necessity. The law's vindicatory complex involves three elements, the vindicative , the vindictive and the validatory . In legal practice and cultural presentation, vindication is the key element but this is aligned with the vindictive (the punitive) in a way that undermines it and blocks a linkage with a broader validatory element. Reflecting this legally organised combination and disconnection, Happy Valley illustrates and articulates how criminal justice works. Its vindicatory complex forecloses the broader social, political and ethical options it invokes.