Book Review: Capital Punishment: Global Issues and Prospects
| Date | 01 January 1997 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X9707000116 |
| Published date | 01 January 1997 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK REVIEWS
TRANSFORMING CRIMINAL POLICY, by A. Rutherford.
Waterside Press. Paperback £16.
Transforming Criminal Policy is the first work in the Waterside Press
Criminal Policy Series. The individual volumes (which will be issued
at a rate
of
four to six each year) address key issues for criminal policies
in the UK and across the world. This is the initial volume written by the
series editor Andrew Rutherford, author of Prisons and the Process
of
Justice, Growing out
of
Crime, The New Era and Criminal Justice and
The Pursuit
of
Decency.
This book provides an examination of the transformation of the
criminal policy in the United States, The Netherlands and England and
Wales during the 1980s. In his central argument the author insists on the
need for an integrated criminal policy to protect those values that are
fundamental to a liberal democracy.
It is good to see that a way forward is outlined that seeks to
overcome, "narrow and compartmentalized" ways of thinking about crime
and what to do about it. Your reviewer certainly agrees: when teaching
law he always emphasizes that you cannot (as the police promotion
examinations did) divide law into "little boxes" - you may have a crime,
but what about family law, does it overlap in real life; if so, it should
be reflected in examinations.
It
can go too far of course: you know the
type of questions, what would happen in a matter of months on your
patch appears to happen in a single morning.
The book will be of interest to students of criminology and police
officers. This promises to be a good series.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: GLOBAL ISSUES AND PROSPECTS
P. Hodgkinson and A. Rutherford. Waterside Press. Paperback £32.
This is the second volume in the Waterside Press Criminal Policy Series
and addresses key issues for criminal policy in the UK and across the
world. The book includes original chapters by leading authorities on the
death penalty in the USA, Russia, and the Commonwealth of independent
States, The People's Republic of China, Europe and the UK, Africa and
the Caribbean.
There are 11 contributors to the book, with an essay from Hogo
Adam Dedau; Simon Coldham; Edward Fitzgerald, QC; Stanislaw
Frankowski; John Hatchard; Peter Hodgkinson; Michael Palmer; Michael
Radelet; Andrew Rutherford; William A. Schabus and Ger Pieter Van
Berg.
Capital punishment remains an emotive subject - it is certain this
book will be of interest to many police officers worldwide, some of
whom serve in jurisdictions which continue the practice which has been
rejected by others.
Opinions are of course divided. The ageing thoughts of Britain's last
two chiefhangmen probably reflect the divided public opinion in the UK:
92 The Police Journal December 1997
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