The paper attempts to reflect critically on the author’s work in eastern Europe and considers ‘transfer’ of policy and practice. There is a great deal of activity of this type as transitional democracies, typically relatively new members of the Council of Europe and often aspiring to membership of the EU, try to establish modern criminal justice practices by drawing on the experiences of northern and western Europe. How are such undertakings to be understood and theorised? There is a dearth of theoretical writing in this area and this paper raises fundamental questions.