Kathleen Daly, Redressing institutional abuse of children
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865815587070 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Author | Fiona Haines |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
existence of the corporation. Tombs and Whyte argue, ‘The problems caused by cor-
porations...are enduring and necessary functions of the corporation’ (2015, p. 4), and on
that basis they need to be abolished. My cynical side tends to agree.
However, we are still left with the problem of the present, of how to deal with what
sits in front of us as corporate crime and the pharmaceutical industry, in all its disturb-
ing manifestations. Dukes, Braithwaite and Moloney have confronted this head on,
not just as academics but as dedicated advocates for improving the ethical foundations
of the legal drugs industry. Criticism is easy, constructing a solution less so. This is a
powerful book that demands to be read by all those concerned about the health of
nations. It is also a call to arms for criminologists to turn a scholarly eye to the plethora
of harms and crimes perpetrated by the pharmaceutical industry. Our response to this is
long overdue.
References
Braithwaite, J. (1984). Corporate crime in the pharmaceutical industry. London, England:
Routledge.
Reiman, J., & Leighton, P. (2009). The rich get richer and the poor get prison: Ideology, class, and
criminal justice. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Tombs, S., & Whyte, D. (2015). The corporate criminal: Why corporations must be abolished.
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Kathleen Daly, Redressing institutional abuse of children. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2014; 304 pp.
ISBN 978-1-137-41434-2, £65.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Fiona Haines, University of Melbourne, Australia
This is an ambitious and important book. It sets out to document the historical abuse of
children in institutional care, to provide an understanding of cases of abuse in Australia
and Canada, and to place institutional child abuse within a broad theoretical frame-
work. This framework draws from Goffman’s concept of total institutions to assist in
understanding the level of abuse together with an analysis of redress drawing on tools
provided by restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence and transitional justice.
The book provides an invaluable reference for understanding the disparate cases of
institutional abuse across Canada and Australia from the late 19th to the mid-20th
centuries. Through detailed comparative analysis of 19 major cases, Kathleen Daly
carefully teases apart the similarities and differences in the cases themselves, the experi-
ences of abuse, the emergence of complaints, the responses to those complaints, the
nature of redress both in terms of its process and outcomes and finally an appreciation
of what redress means in the context of justice for the victims. In doing so, she answers
Blumer’s (1971) historic call for a rigorous analysis of the sociological problem, which
pays careful attention to the process by which social problems emerge and are dealt with.
This is a daunting task since the sheer weight of the documentation requires both dedi-
cation and skill in marshalling material in an accessible form. Considerable skill in
representing experiences accurately and with integrity is also evident, highlighting
common themes whilst at the same time appreciating differences, some subtle and
some more striking.
600 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 48(4)
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