Editorial
| Author | Dave Ward |
| Position | Professor |
| Pages | 1-3 |
EDITORIAL
Professor Dave Ward, De Montfort University
It is an honour and pleasure to edit and present this first of three issues of the BJCJ in
memory and recognition of our late colleague Professor Brian Williams. Brian died
tragically and unexpectedly in a freak accident in his car last March. Following Professor
Paul Senior’s tribute to Brian in the Summer 2007 edition of this journal (Senior 2007)
the Editorial Board decided to dedicate an issue of the journal to Brian and his work. We
chose the theme of social justice as one which we believed would be dear to Brian’s heart
and would reflect and commemorate his progressive thinking on a range of aspects of
criminal justice, most prominently his research and writing on probation values,
restorative justice, victims of crime and work with prisoners. In recent years his work had
gained, increasingly, an international dimension, connecting into developments around
these subjects in Canada, South Africa, Russia and various parts of Europe.
Initially, the board planned just one edition of the journal on this theme and in memory
of Brian. However, we received so many responses to our call for contributions, from
Britain, Europe and beyond, that we took the decision to dedicate all three issues for 2008
to the topic. Indeed, a good number of the authors have indicated that they were drawn to
their word processors by the opportunity provided to contribute to this memorial and, in
their papers, some have specifically related their own conceptual work to Brian’s own
outputs. Among the responses to our call, we were fortunate to be offered a collection
from a European network in which Brian was a member and which contains a hitherto
unpublished paper by Brian himself. This will appear in the next issue.
We have deliberately sought not to confine the scope of contributions by offering an a
priori definition of social justice. Rather, we hope that through the exploration of issues
which authors themselves consider to appertain to social justice we can contribute greater
richness and texture to thinking about, and conceptualisation of, the subject. Social
justice is at the heart of all five papers in this first issue. The authors tackle with passion
areas in which injustice and inequity are clear to see, be it in the experiences of veterans
of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, in provision for Black and minority
ethnic sex offenders in prison, in the lives of children detained at an Immigration
Removal Centre, in the human rights violation endured by the parents of a child removed
compulsorily for adoption, in the punitive values and approaches which have gained
ascendancy in our criminal justice system. All, I am confident, would have rung bells for
Brian and attracted his attention and interest.
Gwyneth Boswell reports on the findings of a feasibility study involving in-depth
interviews with men and women who had fought in the campaign against apartheid in
South Africa. This research was part of a larger study into the experiences of the so-called
‘lost generation’ of South Africans, drawing upon the ANC Archives at the University of
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