Book Review: History and Crime: Implications for Criminal Justice Policy
| Published date | 01 September 1982 |
| Date | 01 September 1982 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000486588201500310 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEWS
187
Limits To Pain. Nils Christie, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo (1981) pp 122.
I have always
thought
of Nils Christie as being as much a
poet
as a criminologist.
His unusual titles, his off-beat lectures, his ability to get a whole thesis into a single
phrase give his work an aesthetic quality rare in this field. This book shows
that
criminology
needs
more such poets.·
Here
Christie, having designated his penal law
colleagues as "pain-law" professors and exposed
the
current
rehabilitation/retribution
controversy as a
debate
about ways to inflict pain, goes on to outline asystem of
participatory justice
even
sharing with
the
reader
the
objections to his
theory
which
he has not
been
able to answer. Those who have heard Professor Christie on
the
community
theme
of"
small is beautiful" and who are aware of his campaigns against
centralization in Norway will find much that is familiar in this book as
the
author
seeks
to give practical guidelines for a society able to manage without
punishment.
He
favours civil
over
criminal procedures, conciliation over formal legal conflict and
wants to build up neighbourhood boards or councils at
the
expense of State
intervention.
He
wants conflict "handled"
rather
than "solved" or "managed"
and
deplores
the
way in which, as a case goes for trial by outsiders,
the
victim suffers not
only from
the
offence
but
from
the
loss of participation in
the
conflict which is his own.
The
statistics
and
philosophical studies of crime and its
treatment
in
modern
society
are
condensed
to a few humanitarian principles that we
are
all surprised we
overlooked. This is a small, succinct, challenging book which will
enhance
the
prestige of
the
author. It isa tribute to its rare distinction in criminological
literature
that
I feel a sense of guilt in having to
add
that
the
picture still
needs
completion. We
now
need
acompanion volume to expose
the
limitations of neighbourhood councils
as effectively as Nils Christie has exposed
the
dangers of
our
State machinery to
control crime.
W
CLIFFORD
Canberra
History
and
Crime:
Implications for
Criminal
Justice Policy.
Edited
by James A
Inciardi
and
Charles EFaupel, Sage Publications (1980)288pp, no price given.
The
application of historical research to
the
study of crime is becoming increasingly
popular and this work is devoted to exploring both the methodological problems
inherent
in such research and demonstrating some fruitful areas for historical analysis.
It
also seeks to show that historical research can produce data which have useful
applications to present-day policy making.
The
volume is organized into four sections.
The
first deals with general theoretical
and
methodological issues. In an interesting opening paper,
Ted
Robert
Gurr
discusses
current
crime patterns and criminaljustice systems as manifestations of four
long-term processes of modernization: industrialization,
the
growth of cities,
the
expansion of
the
power
of
the
State, and
the
humanization of personal relations.
Gurr
studies
the
implications that
the
reversal of these processes might have for public
order
in
the
future
and
argues that analysis ofhistorical
precedents
has relevance for
predictions of future patterns of criminal behaviour. In a
complementary
paper, Eric
Monkkonen surveys much of
the
quantitative work on crime
and
criminal justice
that
has
been
done
in
the
past, and argues
that
it is not inadequacy of statistical tools which
has flawed such research,
but
rather problems of model design
and
data collection.
His discussion of specific problem areas could profitably be
perused
by all those
embarking on historical research into crime.
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