Book Review: Book Review

DOI10.1177/1748895810383803
Published date01 November 2010
Date01 November 2010
Subject MatterArticles
/tmp/tmp-17RZyvtcId3e5F/input Book Review
Criminology & Criminal Justice
Book Review
10(4) 417–418
© The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1748895810383803
crj.sagepub.com
J. Shapland (ed.)
Justice, community and civil society:
A contested terrain
, Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2008;
272pp: 13:9781843922995, £26.99
Reviewed by: Karen F. Evans, University of Liverpool, UK
This volume is the product of a series of seminars and conversations organised through the
auspices of the pan-European research group GERN which is active in the field of crime
and criminal justice. These have resulted in a series of chapters which describe how the
criminal justice systems in France, Germany, the Netherlands, England and Wales, Northern
Ireland, Ireland and Canada have dealt with increasing calls for justice to step outside of its
ivory tower and move closer to the people on whom it impacts – whether as individual
victims, citizens who want a stake in the process of justice, or the offenders who come
under their scrutiny. This comparative material throws up important differences in both the
interpretation of key concepts such as ‘community’, ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘civil society’
which are essential to an understanding of the processes outlined, and in the practical imple-
mentation of policies which purport to move the criminal justice system into a more local
arena in which, it appears from these essays, to be less than comfortable.
From the varied contributions to this volume, it would seem that public confidence in
the many and disparate national criminal justice systems which are in operation across
Europe seems to have faltered in recent decades. This falling confidence cannot be
understood merely as a product of rising crime rates in all these countries as they have
increased and also fallen at different rates both within and across separate nations.
Instead, a lack of trust in the organs of the state in general also seem to have...

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