Transforming Criminal Policy

Description

This, the first volume in the Waterside Press Criminal Policy Series explores what the subtitle calls ‘Spheres of Influence in the USA, The Netherlands and England and Wales during the 1980s’, focusing on the activities of three strategically placed individuals: James Q Wilson, Dato Steenhuis and David Faulkner. Whilst the policy-making process cannot be determined by referenda, it is too important to be left exclusively to experts. In a central argument the author insists on the need for an integrated criminal policy as a means of protecting those values which are fundamental to a liberal democracy. A way forward is outlined which seeks to overcome ‘narrow and compartmentalised ways of thinking about crime and what to do about it’. These ideas will be of interest to people across the whole arena of criminal policy. They will be of particular interest to those practitioners and students of criminology or criminal justice who reject tidy or simplistic solutions and the often seductive impact of populist agenda.

Author

Andrew Rutherford is Professor in Law at Southampton University. From 1984 to 1999 he was chairman of the Howard League for Penal Reform. He is the author of Prisons and the Process of Justice (Heineman), Growing Out of Crime: The New Era and Criminal Justice and the Pursuit of Decency (both Waterside Press).