Book Review: Investigating Murder: Detective Work and the Police Response to Criminal Homicide
| Author | Aogán Mulcahy |
| DOI | 10.1177/136248060500900209 |
| Published date | 01 May 2005 |
| Date | 01 May 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
of an admirably conceived and executed investigation which has important
implications for prison policy, evaluation studies and investigative method-
ology; the rest is an over-referenced and eclectic commentary on that study and
it is a commentary, moreover, which mainly concentrates on management
concerns about how values should be prioritized, and without any explanation
of which values must be prioritized if prisoners are to be kept in prison. My
main criticism, however, is that throughout her commentary, Liebling implies
that Prisons and their Moral Performance tells a ‘truer’ story about prisons
than did books such as the classic Cohen and Taylor (1972) study of long-term
imprisonment or even the very detailed and very critical Inspectorate reports of
recent times.
The story that Liebling tells is an important story, and it is one that the Home
Office, prison staff and, indeed, all persons concerned with prisons, will like to
hear. But it is only one story, and, by and large, it is one that most people who
know anything about prisons will easily recognize. The more critical research
stories, which focus on other dimensions of, and ask different and more
fundamental questions about, prison life, construct different truths. After
reading this in many ways frustrating book, I couldn’t help wondering if the
moral performances of prisons might be better if both the Home Office and
Prison Service were to take more seriously the ‘truths’ which they do not like to
hear, and which, year after year, Home Office-funded researchers fail to
name.
References
Cohen, S. and L. Tayor (1972) Psychological Survival. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Elliot, C. (1999) Locating the Energy for Change: An Introduction to
Appreciative Inquiry. Winnipeg: International Institute for Sustainable
Development.
Liebling, A. (1992) Suicides in Prison. London: Routledge.
Martin Innes
Investigating Murder: Detective Work and the Police Response to Criminal
Homicide
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. xv + 318 pp. £50 (hbk). ISBN
0–19–925942–9.
•Reviewed by Aog´an Mulcahy, University College Dublin, Republic of
Ireland
This excellent book provides a nuanced and sensitive account of how police
investigate murder cases. However, it does far more than simply establish the
manner in which such investigations occur in terms of organizational struc-
tures; it also sheds important light on the process of sense-making that is a
Book Reviews 253
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