Book Review: The Eternal Criminal Record
| Date | 01 October 2015 |
| Author | Jannemieke Ouwerkerk |
| Published date | 01 October 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X1502200508 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
778 22 MJ 5 (2015)
BOOK REVIEW
James B. Jacobs , e Eternal Criminal Record, Harvard University Press, 2015, ISBN
9780674368262, Hardcover, €36.
It might be uncommon to describe an academ ic book as a page-turner but this is exactly
how I would label the book e Eternal Criminal Record by James B. Jacobs.1 It is an
accessible, well-documented overv iew of crimina l record databases, policies and prac tices
in t he US. To show US exce ption alis m in t his c ontex t, he compa res t he US a pproac h wit h
the European approach to the creat ion and use of criminal records. It is the compa rative
perspective in par ticular that makes the book very i nformative and relevant for both US
and non-US legal scholars. Sharp contra sts between the two approaches a re revealed,
which to a large extent were formerly unk nown to me, and possibly to other legal schola rs
who are educated and rooted in t he European ‘style of legal t hinki ng’. To summari ze
the divergence: US policy primarily focuses on judicial transparency, while European
approaches are governed by individual rig hts (for example, the right to privacy). As a
result, US individual criminal history records are to a large ex tent publicly accessible,
whereas European countr ies commonly prohibit non-law enforcement agencies, the
media, and the genera l public from having access to crimina l records.
is review starts with a description of the book’s structure and content (Section
1), followed by some brief observations on the added value of this book (Section 2).
Subsequently, it discusses the comparative part of the book, and comments on the
accuracy of parts of the comparative analysis (Section 3). e nal conclusion drawn is
that e Eter nal Criminal Record comes highly recommended (Section 4).
§1. STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF THE BOOK
e book comprises four parts. Part I (Chapters 2 to 5) on e Production and
Dissemination of Criminal Records provides a description of the US criminal record
infrast ructure. e author distinguishes police records (that is, criminal i ntelligence
and investigative databases as well as criminal history records, usually known as rap
sheets), court records, and criminal record information held by commercial information
vendors. It not only deals with the question of how such criminal records are created,
and how some of these (for example, some of the quasi-criminal databases2) may result
1 James B. Jacobs is Ch ief Justice Warren E. Burger Profe ssor of Constitutiona l Law and the Courts , and
Director of the Ce nter for Research in Crime a nd Justice at New York University School of Law.
2 e term ‘quasi-crimin al database s’ refers to database s that do not report conv icted crimi nals, but
‘only’ suspected crimina ls (for instance suspecte d members of terrorist groups, or su spected members
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