Monday, June 21, 2021

A critique of criminal law and justice


 




Ex-library. Very good condition. HB. 368pp. 

At a time when the crime rate has reached new peaks, criminal justice isn't working. It is no good at convicting criminals, and even worse at dealing with those it does convict. Meanwhile, the national debate about crime and criminal justice becomes even more shrill, and its participants mired ever deeper in archaic cliche.

IN THE NAME OF THE LAW challenges equally the ebbing shibboleths of the liberal left, and the terrifying revenge justice of the right. It asks what can be learned about our society from the way it treats its criminals and organises its policemen. The book concludes that criminal justice provides the starkest pointer to a twenty-first-century hell: a two-thirds/one-third society, with the comfortable defending themselves against a desperate minority with guns and fortifications. Rose argues that these are measures which can be taken to avoid the Los Angeles-like world we seem to be creating.

About the author

David Rose is a writer and investigative journalist. 

His awards include the David Watt Memorial Prize and the One World award for human rights journalism. 

His work appears in The Observer and Vanity Fair

Among his books are In the Name of the Law, a widely-praised examination of the British criminal justice system; and A Climate of Fear, an investigation of the Broadwater Farm case and the conviction of Winston Silcott. 

He has also written books on mountaineering, including Regions of the Heart, a biography of Alison Hargreaves, the British climber who died in her attempt to conquer K2, and he is working on a book about the US death penalty centred on a miscarriage of justice in the town of Columbus, Georgia. 

David Rose lives in Oxford with his family.

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