Book Review: Crime and Penal Policy: Reflections on Fifty Years Experience
| Author | Roma Mitchell |
| Published date | 01 September 1980 |
| Date | 01 September 1980 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000486588001300308 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REVIEWS
219
Crime
and
Penal Policy: Reflections on Fifty Years Experience. Barbara Wootton,
George Allen &Unwin, London, pp 261
$"A19.50.
The
Baroness
Wootton
of Abinger
appears
to have lost nothing of her zest for
reform. In
Crime
and
Penal Policy,
subtitled
"Reflections on Fifty Years'
Experience", she advocates, with youthful enthusiasm, the abolition of juvenile
courts, the
removal
of children
of
compulsory
school age from the processes of
the
criminal law
and
the
treatment
within
the
educational
system
of those
children whose
behaviour
would, in the
case
of adults, constitute crimes, She
expresses the
hope
that,
"by
one
route
or
another,
the time is
not
too
far
off
when
the
formidable
fortresses that
now
disfigure our cities
and
countryside
will
either
be allowed to
crumble
into ruins or
be
converted
to
more
agreeable
uses;
and
that
reliance on
imprisonment
as a
major
element
in the
penal
system will
take
its place alongside transportation
and
the
stocks in the history
books
as one
of
the strange delusions of
our
forbears".
Nevertheless, she
tempers
her
optimism
with considerable pessimism
concerning
the efficacy of the alternatives to
detention
both
tried
and
hitherto
untried, including those
which
she herself has strenuously
recommended
and
still
recommends.
Crime
and Penal Policy is eminently
readable
and
should
be
of interest
both
to
the
"non-professional
public
with an interest in
penology"
to
whom
the
author
says that it is primarily
addressed,
and
to those
who
have aprofessional interest
in the prevention of
crime
and
in the
consequences
of crime to
the
wrongdoer.
The
latter
group
do
not
escape
the astringency of
Lady
Wootton's comments.
This
reviewer
found
herself in
agreement
with
the author's suggestion
concerning
a
statement
by an unidentified sociologist
that
"a
prison
is a
large-scale, multi-group organization,
characterized
by
atask orientation,
functional specialization
and
role-reciprocity", that she
had
found
"nothing to
confirm
or
refute
this
statement
or
even
to
make
It intelligible". But less
palatable
was
the opinion that the sentence for serious crimes,
being
in
England,
as in Australia, a
matter
for the discretion of
"one
man
or
woman
acting
alone,"
is "a
very
grave blemish on
our
system",
Except
that
in
England
lay magistrates
playa
much
more
important
role than
do
their
counterparts
in Australia in
determining
guilt or innocence of an
accused
person
and
in sentencing
the
convicted, the discussion
concerning
the
function
of
the courts
and
their constitution is
equally
relevant to
both
countries and,
whether
one
agrees
with
the author's conclusions or not,
her
arguments
are
stimulating
and
thought
provoking. Asimilarity in the
pattern
of
drug
offences in
both
countries is easily discernible,
except
that
England
had
to
grapple
with
the
problems
arising
therefrom
rather
sooner than
we
did.
It
may
be said
that
no
new
solutions
are
offered
in relation to this or any other
problem,
and
it
would
have
been
little short of miraculous if
they
had
been.
Lady
Wootton has
served
on numerous
government
committees
concerned
with
criminological
matters
starting with the (Streatfeild)
Committee
on the Business
of
the Criminal
Courts
1958-1961,
and
in 1977
when
she
wrote
this
book
she
remained
a
member
of the Advisory Council on the Penal System to
which
she
had
been
appointed
at its inception in 1964.
Through
the various
committees
of
which
she has
been
a
member,
and
in
her
earlier books
and
articles, she has
promulgated
her innovative ideas on crime, criminals
and
their
treatment.
In this
To continue reading
Request your trial