Recent Book: Do You Consent?: Binding over in the Magistrates' Court
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7604900220 |
| Author | F. Graham Glover |
| Date | 01 April 1976 |
| Published date | 01 April 1976 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
strative Behavior (Macmillan, 1961)
and
The Shape
of
Automation: For
Men and Management
(Harper
&Row,
1965). Nonetheless it would be diffi-
cult to fault Police Command, for
within the compass of 150 pages
Grosman
has addressed himself to
the essentialelements of the problem
...
and
he has placed responsibility for
decision-making
and
the exercise of
discretion where it logically belongs
...
on the police commander. As
Harry
Truman
is reputed to have said:
"The
buck stops here."
Grosman
organizes his small volume
well.....chapters on leadership, com-
munications and control, bureaucracy,
discretion, the overreach of the crimi-
nal law (not citing however the very
apposite Herbert Packer: The Limits
of
the Criminal Sanction, Stanford
1968), the limits of police leadership
(would
that
Chief Ed Davis of the
Los Angeles Police Department read
this chapter),
and
improving police
decisions. In each chapter, he sets
forth indirectly an hypothesis, mar-
shals facts
and
logic to support it,
and
suggests courses of action. He is
neither overly dogmatic nor so wisqy-
washy as to be unhelpful; rather he
attempts to guide the police com-
mander-leader to an appreciation of
his decision-making responsibility and
spells out some mind-sets
and
some
approaches which cannot but help
the police administrator of ability to
realize his potential.
While Police Command is addressed
to the police of Canada, there is
little in the volume which does not
relate to police in England, the Com-
monwealth, the United States,
and
in fact everywhere. How the police
administrator achieves command,
what are the constraints
that
operate
upon
him, to what ends does he use
his power, to what extent does he
reflect the values, aspirations, hopes
and
fears of his subordinate com-
manders and his police personnel,
the police forces of adjacent juris-
dictions,
and
the community which
he is swornto protect
...
these are basic
command problems;
Grosman
gives
clues to their solutions.
DONAL
E. J.
MACNAMARA
NICKED
SEAN
MCCONVILLE
(Editor): The Use
of
Imprisonment. Routledge &Kegan Paul
£2.95.
This selection of essays provides
an interesting insight into changing
attitudes to imprisonment
among
academics
and
others concerned with
effective penal policy. The book con-
tains eight essays each dealing with a
different aspect of prison life. The
final essay is a discussion of the future
of imprisonment as a penal measure
in Britain by the editor.
It
is this final
essay which provides the
nub
of the
argument put forward by the con-
tributors.
Mr. McConville comes to the con-
clusion
that
ideas of treatment
and
rehabilitation have no place in prison
simply because they have been shown
to be ineffective in this environment.
At the same time he recognizes the
value of imprisonment as a deterrent
and a preventative measure.
This selection of essays is full of
information not to be found elsewhere;
it provides astimulating sounding
board
for any discussion of penal
policy in general;
and
it provides an
interesting insight into the present day
thinking of penal reformers.
THOMAS
SAUNT
DO YOU
CONSENT?
JULIAN
BOWDEN:
Binding Over in the Magistrates' Court. Barry Rose Publishers.
Chichester and
London;
1976. 85p.
Mr. Bowden has contrived to pack hesitate to put forward his own views
aremarkable
amount
of useful infor- on several matters and, with disarming
mation
within the 32 pages of this book.
candour
and
apologizes in advance for
But it would be wrong to regard it as any
that
may ultimately prove to be
a mere assemblage of the necessary erroneous. He describes the powers to
material.
It
is, so to say, a work of bind over as he sees them in the hope
genuine authorship, founded on the
that
others may be induced to examine
writer's experience in advising justices more critically the conclusions he has
minded to bind over those to
appear
reached.
before them and directed to them and At the same time he covers the
to the writer's colleagues. He does not ground objectively in providing a
138
April
1976
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