Book Review: Kate Rossmanith, Small Wrongs: How We Really Say Sorry in Love, Life and Law
| Author | Brian Stout |
| DOI | 10.1177/2066220318801661 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
https://doi.org/10.1177/2066220318801661
European Journal of Probation
2018, Vol. 10(2) 178 –179
© The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/2066220318801661
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejp
Book Review
Kate Rossmanith, Small Wrongs: How We Really Say Sorry in Love, Life and Law, Hardie Grant
Books: UK and Australia, 2018. ISBN 9781743794111, $32.99 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Brian Stout, Western Sydney University, Australia
What is remorse, how do we show it and how are sentencers to judge it? Kate Rossmanith’s
beautifully written memoir addresses these questions in a range of personal and public
settings and it is the author’s engagement with the criminal justice system that will be of
most interest to readers of this journal. Those who work in the court system, particularly
in writing sentencing reports, will know that a key determinant in a court’s sentencing
process is the perceived remorse of the person who has just been convicted. In this fasci-
nating book, Rossmanith draws attention to the obvious, but often overlooked, fact that
remorse is sought, measured and, seemingly, assessed by the courts but it is never clearly
defined. How do we know that an offender is remorseful? And why does it matter?
Rossmanith draws on her own life as well as her academic research to consider how the
concept might be identified and understood.
This response of remorse, or regret or shame is central to many ideas of how offenders
reform, whether it is connected to reintegrative shaming in restorative justice or the crea-
tion of a new identity in conceptions of desistance or just seen as a form of pain and the
first step of punishment in more classical ideas. In the book, remorse is seen as fulfilling
a variety of functions. It is described by an interviewee as both reducing the pain of vic-
tims and sending a signal to the community that the offender is serious about rehabilita-
tion. It plays a part in the spectacle of denunciation that makes up the court process.
Remorse is also an acknowledgement of guilt, with the consequence that those who are
victims of miscarriages of justice are doubly disadvantaged in that as well as being
wrongly convicted, they face harsher punishment owing to their perceived lack of
remorse. It is often spoken of in mystical or religious terms, as if experiencing remorse,
particularly of the spontaneous and genuine kind is a step towards soul-saving.
Rossmanith commences the book with a detailed description of a particular court
hearing, describing in detail the vehicular homicide crime itself as well as the presenta-
tion and demeanor of the key characters in the court process. She returns to this case
throughout the book, having observed the court hearing itself and spoken to key players
and her focus is not on the adjudication, but on the sentencing. The perceived remorse,
or lack of it, of the female driver – who had taken the life of a young man – was central
to the court process and decision but was interpreted and understood in different ways by
801661EJP0010.1177/2066220318801661European Journal of ProbationBook Review
2018
Book Review
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