Book Review: Crime, State and Citizen
| Author | David Mathieson |
| Date | 01 December 2001 |
| Published date | 01 December 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455050104800417 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
302
looks at some of the Service’s work in
partnership with other agencies,
particularly in the drug and alcohol
field, where she is something of a
specialist. She suggests a goal of harm
minimisation, in a discussion which
advances the debate, without resolving it.
Peter Raynor drew the short straw of
talking about “community” and as a
result, although his paper contains a lot
of interesting material, it lacks overall
coherence.
There is a disappointing contribution
from Mark Liddle, whose review of
partnerships shows little understanding
of the purchasing role in service-funded
partnerships, an undervaluing of the
Service’s contribution to multi-agency
crime reduction, where we are
consistently seen to “punch above our
weight” and a virtual ignorance of work
with the police in MAPPPs dealing with
high risk offenders. George Mair’s
review of the impact of technology
amazingly does not refer to the Home
Office’s role in the disaster of CRAMS,
and his pique at the initial reluctance
of the Service to embrace electronic
monitoring and OGRS is not only petty
but also out-of-date. However, he does
remind us that we would be wise to work
with technological developments rather
than against them. Finally, Michael
Smith’s piece on public safety and
restorative justice betrays a lack of
detailed knowledge of the current
situation in the U.K.
Overall, however, this is an impressive
collection and even the disappointing
papers cover important issues. One
worrying feature is the lack of knowledge
by academics of some aspects of the
Service’s current work (e.g. multi-agency
crime reduction and work with the police),
and this is a gap in understanding which
the Service itself has a responsibility to
bridge. Tony Leach,
Deputy Chief Probation Officer,
London
Crime, State and Citizen
David Faulkner
Waterside Press, 2001; pp359;
£22.50 pbk ISBN 1 872 870 98 8
We have waited a long time for David
Faulkner’s first book – so has it been
worth the waiting? At the outset, the
author states that his book is “an attempt
to identify some of the questions of
governance, citizenship and public service
which Britain has to face at the start of a
new century, especially in relation to
crime and criminal justice and to suggest
how they might be approached through
legislation, policy and professional
practice”. He writes on the basis of a
thirty year career at the heart of
government, and currently he is Senior
Research Associate at the University of
Oxford Centre for Criminological
Research and Chair of the Howard League
for Penal Reform. So the reader can
justifiably have high expectations of this
book.
Part 1 sets the scene by describing a
period of rapid and confusing change in
society. Faulkner presents a substantial
critique of the political responses to
change of successive governments in
recent years – and in particular he is
critical of the Labour Government for its
new form of governance which is “more
centralised, more politically directed and
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