Recent Book: Burt and Cooper: The Endorsement of Driving Licences and Disqualification from Driving
| Date | 01 July 1985 |
| Published date | 01 July 1985 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8505800313 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
RECENT BOOKS
BURT AND COOPER: The Endorsement of Driving Licences and Disqualification
from Driving. Third Edition.
Chichester: Barry Rose (Publishers) Ltd. £6.00.
Acomprehensive consolidated guide to both the legal and practical aspects
involved in the endorsement of driving licences and disqualification of drivers.
the third edition provides a very necessary up-dating of this important procedure.
It includes a number of examples on the "totting up" procedures. indicating
when penalty pooints should be or should not be considered, and contained in the
Appendices are references to many relevant and useful stated cases. In short, a
useful and ready guide to practitioners. E.D.
CRAIG
PARKER: The Japanese Police System Today: An American Perspective.
Kodansha International Ltd. £19.95.
The comparison of "apples and oranges" is a difficult business. Apart from a
similar degree of roundness, one has to go deep beneath the surface, to the
molecular level, to commence any meaningful comparison. The comparison of two
nations is of this order. Get down to the molecular level - the mores and norms of
the culture and of family life - and you may have some basis for comparison.
The comparison of "apples and apples" is even more problematic. On the
surface, and below it, there may well be remarkable similarities but the one thing
which makes one apple really different from another is the flavour. A flavour is
almost impossible to describe to another person and may make the difference
between their use of an "eater" or a "cooker".
Comparisons of "apples and apples" is the business of the
author
engaged in an
analysis of policing in different nations. Superficially, all police departments are the
same. They have identical (or at least remarkably similar) organizational
philosophies, usually expressed in writing in the form of an aim to prevent crime
and preserve public tranquility; they may have similar equipment; and even
administer broadly similar laws, but beneath the surface the flavour is different.
Quite remakably, Professor Parker has succeeded in producing abook, of
modest length, which has captured both the "apples and oranges" differences of the
U.S.A. and
Japan
but also the "apples and apples" flavour of policing styles, and
unwritten philosophies. Such philosophies are part of the psychology of the people
and are thus associated with the mores and norms of the society.
Strangely, this approach to comparative police studies is one I also greatly
favour, both as a police officer and as a qualified psychologist, since it seems to me
that superficial comparisons can far too frequently be misleading and sometimes
downright dangerous. Without the sort of understanding of deeply in-grained,
underlying features of the society many superficial differences and similarities are,
for many people, difficult to comprehend.
James Mitchener, the US author, once said in an interview in Playboy in
1981
that "Guns to Americans are aphrodisiacs". It is my experience that, because they
do not understand the society, many American police officers do not even believe
that the vast majority of British police officers perform their duty unarmed. Not
only that - the British cop's aversion to firearms and their regular use, often
makes it impossible for him or her to understand how a Japanese officer can be
armed and yet rarely, if ever, use his weapon.
This, and many other "apples and apples" differences and similarities, are
remarkably well conveyed in Professor Parker's book. The style, which is
July 1985 273
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