Book Review: The Criminal Justice System and Women
| Author | Jocelynne A Scutt |
| Published date | 01 December 1983 |
| Date | 01 December 1983 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000486908301600417 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEWS 283
ti
epreparedness of the committees to test their own powers.
The
example of
the
clash between Merseyside Chief Constable Ken Oxford and
the
Merseyside police
committee is an example.
Nor
is the lawyer's curiosity as to questions of legal form satisfied in
the
calls
made
for the democratization of
the
justice system nor as to
what
limits
are
proposed
to protect against the possible tyranny of popular discourse.
Recurring
calls for an "authentic" and "genuinely social
order",
while appealing
remain
essentially undeveloped, reminiscent of The New Criminology.
On
the
positive
side, however, Taylor displays an admirable sensitivity to women's issues in his
discussion of legal issues affecting women, and does not romanticize
about
a
non-existent sense of community in large sections of the working class.
He
also
avoids
the
early 1970s faddish, dismissive glibness concerning
the
so-called
"dark
figure"
and
public anxiety over crime, conceding the reality of public fears
and
the
need
for women, various minority groups and others to accept (while having
enhanced
input into) some form of policing. In this way Taylor has sincerely sought
to provide apractical, working manifesto for the Left on matters affecting law
and
order.
Whether
he is ultimately successful in this aim shall remain aquestion for
posterity.
There
has
been
talk of a new book by Ian Taylor some time. It is
therefore
unfortunate
that
the manuscript for
the
book
had
been substantially
completed,
except for the Introduction, prior to
the
riots around Britain in
the
summer
of 1981.
These
events gave rise to rhetorical clashes on law and
order
which would have
provided further material for Taylor's analysis of the law
and
order
issue in
contemporary Britain. However, in concluding,
the
author
has provided a
provocative account of post-World War II social policy in Britain, identifying its
limitations, with a view to developing amore coherent transitorial policy for
the
Left on law and
order,
to which he addresses
the
second half of
the
book.
Yet,
as
stated
earlier, it is
not
athorough criminological exegesis of
the
issues addressed,
but
remains chiefly a political document directed, as
the
covernotes suggest, to
the
"transformation of
our
society".
ANDREW
GOLDSMITH
University of Warwick
The
Criminal Justice System
and
Women. Edited and compiled by
Barbara
Raffel
Price
and
Natalie JSokoloff, Clark
Boardman
Co,
Ltd, New
York,
New
York
(1982) $US50 (hardcover), $US20 (paperback).
". . . mounting evidence supports the conclusion that the criminal justice system as a whole screens out
the middle class offender, while leaving the poor and often the racial minorities to be dealt with by
imprisonment
...
anyone who has spent time in women's prisons.would agree that they are not
institutions for the rich
...
" Linda Singer, "Women and the Correctional Process" (1973) 11American
Criminal Law Review 295.
Barbara
Raffel Price and Natalie JSokoloff begin their edited collection with this
quotation from Singer, in a chapter dealing with women and
the
criminal law which
illustrates well
the
dual themes they seek to elucidate in covering
the
problems of
women in
the
criminal justice system from the perspective of
the
offender,
the
victim,
the
worker and the criminologist or
other
theorist: women
and
the
crimes
they commit or fall victim to cannot be seenin isolation from sexist structures of
the
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