Book Review: Public Confidence in Criminal Justice: A History and Critique

Published date01 June 2018
Date01 June 2018
DOI10.1177/0264550518771467b
AuthorMike Guilfoyle
Subject MatterBook reviews
PRB771467 223..228
Book reviews
227
Public Confidence in Criminal Justice: A History and Critique
Elizabeth R. Turner
Palgrave Macmillan; 2018; pp. 135; £39.99; hbk
ISBN: 978-3319678979
Reviewed by: Mike Guilfoyle, Retired Associate Member, Napo
This slender volume, which is part of the Critical Criminological Perspectives series,
offers a useful, timely and insightful analysis of the shifting understandings of how
public perceptions and views of the criminal justice system, often informed by
prevailing consumer-focused neo-liberal political outlooks, are measured and acted
upon. In particular, how such views have come to be dominated by what the author
posits as an unhealthy overdependence on quantitatively-grounded survey-based
approaches, encased in what she dubs the ‘AGAP’ view of the citizen (namely
aggregative, general, atomised, passive). This is an approach, she argues, often
disfavours more richly granulated qualitative methods that might if more properly
considered provide a more deliberative and progressive politics of crime and jus-
tice. The historical chronological overviews that shape the contours of how the trope
of public confidence became such a hotly contested measurable outcome adopted
by politicians, researchers and criminal justice agencies are lucidly presented and
well developed and made accessible to the wider reader. Each chapter has an
introductory abstract and a keywords notation such that the themes pursued are
threaded in a way that makes for a punchy and at time provocative narrative.
The opening chapter offers a concise and critical account of the evolution of
research on public confidence in the criminal justice system in England and Wales
and challenges some of the established findings of experts in the field and some of
their working assumptions, amongst other things, the assumption as to just how ill-
informed the public might be in this area. It alludes to many contemporary survey-
based examples, watershed newsworthy stories, as well as governmental attempts
at...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT