Book Review: Exercising Discretion: decision-making in the criminal justice system and beyond
| Author | Terry Thomas |
| Published date | 01 December 2003 |
| Date | 01 December 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/147322540300300307 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews
The Editorial Board invites expressions of interest from anyone keen to review books for
Youth Justice. If you are interested please contact the Book Reviews Editor, Denis Jones,
whose contact details can be found on the inside front cover of the journal.
Lorraine Gelsthorpe and Nicola Padfield (Eds.), Exercising Discretion:
decision-making in the criminal justice system and beyond, Willan Publishing,
Cullompton, Devon, 2003, £30.00, ISBN 1-903240-99-9
Reviewed by: Terry Thomas, Department of Social Work, Leeds Metropolitan
University
The use of ‘discretion’by practitioners throughout the criminal justice system has long
been recognised. The Home Secretary’s recent pronouncements on trying to curb
judicial discretion in sentencing have revived debates on the subject. The editors of this
set of essays say they have only the ‘modest aim’of ‘add(ing) to a descriptive
understanding of the uses of discretion in contemporary criminal justice’in order to
‘keep debates about the meaning and use of discretion alive.’As they –and their
contributors –are all connected to the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge, the result
is one of clarity and learning that is to be welcomed.
The editors are also anxious to highlight the ways in which any benefits associated
with ‘discretion’can too easily veer off into exercises in ‘discrimination’or ‘disparity’.
The question then is how to correct these unhelpful consequences of discretion, and
whether or not more rules and central guidance is the best way to achieve this. The
book has only one chapter specifically on youth justice. Other chapters cover
sentencing, the use of discretion within prisons, decisions to release prisoners and to
detain asylum seekers. All of this lends a coherence to the concept of ‘discretion’and
youth justice workers should not be put-off from ‘stepping-outside their box’to look
at these areas.
Two chapters look at mental health and access to –and release from –
forensic psychiatric units. Psychiatrists who deny their professionalism in favour of
‘gut-instinct’, and psychiatric units who can ‘cherry-pick’who they want to work with,
will all find a resonance in the field of youth justice. The specific chapter on youth
justice (by Lorraine Gelsthorpe and Vicky Kemp) draws on empirical research to look
at police discretion in pre-court decision making. Not least it looks at the impact of
the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 in changing the ethos from one of ‘alternatives’to
court to one of ‘first steps’to court.
David Thomas’chapter provides an invaluable potted history of judicial discretion
in sentencing. He reminds us that it was only as recently as the 1960s that courts paid
any real attention to the precedents set by Appeal courts, and only from the same
period that academics started taking a serious interest in the subject of sentencing.
Today academics and researchers are searching everywhere to illuminate all the darkest
recesses of the criminal justice system. This latest contribution from Willan Publishing
makes them –in just three short years –leaders in the field of criminal justice and
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