Book Review: Book Review
| Author | Nicholas Lord |
| Date | 01 November 2010 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895810383809 |
| Published date | 01 November 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Review
Book Review
Malcolm K. Sparrow
The character of harms: Operational challenges in control, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008; 264 pp: 13:9780521872102 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Nicholas Lord, Cardiff University, UK
This is not a criminology textbook per se, but would be useful for law enforcement and
regulatory agencies, and actors involved in harm reduction in addition to academics
interested in understanding harms in the middle layers between macro-level generality
and micro-level individual incidents.
Sparrow presents a more holistic, contemporary approach to dealing with regulatory
problems (including, but broader than, issues concerning criminal justice) than that of
many other extant approaches. Utilising his experience in working with executives
across the entire spectrum of regulatory and enforcement agencies, as well as 10 years
of duty in the British police force, Sparrow offers a pragmatic approach to operational
challenges in control.
The book is split into two parts. Part I examines the nature of the control task, offering
readers a practical guide to approaching harms, determining at what scale and at what
dimensions to define a problem, and identifying patterns of thought and action, puzzles
of measurement, and structures, protocols and interactions. Part II examines special cat-
egories of harms that possess particular, troublesome and common qualities or properties
which may alter the control challenge: invisible harms; conscious opponents; catastrophic
harms; harms in equilibrium; and performance-enhancing risks.
Sparrow adopts a broad definition of ‘harm’, incorporating ‘potential harms’ and ‘pat-
terns of harms’, as well as ‘actual harms’ already occurred, with all harms varying in
terms of their characteristics, structure, texture and dynamics. Examples include poverty,
terrorism, diseases, money laundering, corruption, environmental issues and product-
safety risks, inter alia. He presses the claim that ‘anyone involved at any level in the
control or mitigation of harms (of any type) might benefit from understanding the dis-
tinctive character of this task, and mastering some distinctive patterns of thought and action
that go with it’ (p. 1). Thus, Sparrow, with the aid of numerous illustrations, presents an
‘operational framework’ within which a focus on the ‘bads’ and controlling harms – an
approach he terms ‘the sabotage of harms’ – as opposed to the construction of ‘goods’,
provides the opportunity for the development of distinctive modes and patterns of
Criminology & Criminal Justice
10(4) 423–424
© The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895810383809
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