George Gilligan and John Pratt, Crime, truth and justice: Official inquiry, discourse, knowledge
| Author | Charles Crothers |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0004865816667868 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2017, Vol. 50(3) 456–465
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865816667868
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Book Reviews
George Gilligan and John Pratt, Crime, truth and justice: Official inquiry, discourse, knowledge. Routledge:
Abingdon, England, 2004/2013; 304 pp. ISBN 9781843920274, £90.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Charles Crothers, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
It is a pity that Routledge reissued, rather than properly updated, this 2004 Willan book
on official inquiries into justice lapses and particularly ‘Royal Commissions of Inquiry’
(RCI) – itself in effect something of a reprise of a 1979 discourse analysis of official
inquiry reports by Frank Burton and Pat Carlen. Police and related agencies are at the
‘hot’ end of government involvement in social life with their intense involvement in
people’s lives, and so it is not surprising that these activities frequently become unstuck
and a second-order of official inquiries is needed to repair the breaches and impose
‘official knowledge’ that describes and explains what has happened. This can involve
various forms of knowledge, forms of inquiry structure, and a range of recommended
and actual outcomes (ranging from white-wash to providing blueprints for change and
from being ignored to being enthusiastically implemented). There are other things going
on too: in chapter 8, Wacquant endeavours to show how inquiries are platforms con-
veying global-wide criminogenic ideological currents, while in chapter 4, Pratt suggests a
particular prison regime in the UK was gradually nestled in place by successive inquiries.
RCIs may become active critics:
[O]fficial discourse has a different role to play in the new model of the British state that
superseded the postwar consensual welfare state. In this new state form, official discourse no
longer simply tries to bring ‘closure’ or pretends that ‘all is for the best in the best of all
possible worlds’. Instead, it may become an aide-de-camp to government in exposing further
layers of bureaucratic incompetence and inefficiency (providing ideological support for
strategies such as privatisation and the emasculation of public sector unions). (p. 5)
Criminological research is both an ally and competitor for official inquiries, and the
chapters in this volume considerably expand on available commentaries on RCIs.
These questions are explored through a range of historical and contemporary case
studies of various RCIs – or groups of RCIs – across Commonwealth countries together
with Holland – supplemented by one chapter (chapter 5) which is a more extensive
comparative fieldwork investigation amongst several UK inquiries. There is a recent
pattern to the inquiry forms:
As central government in the United Kingdom has become more authoritative and directive
in relation to its public services at least, the recourse to some varieties of inquiry, such as
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