Recent Book: Police Firearms: The Search for an Effective Police Handgun
| Author | Colin Greenwood |
| Published date | 01 July 1973 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7304600318 |
| Date | 01 July 1973 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
WHEN
.JUSTICE FAILS
RUlli
BRANDON
and
CHRISTIE
DAVIES:
Wrongful Imprisonment. Mistaken
Convictions
and
their
Consequences. Allen
and
Unwin. £4.50.
This is a
book
about
the fallibil-
and
on occasion
the
authors
are cri-
ity of
our
system of criminal justice. tical of police actions
and
attitudes.
Setting aside cases where a legal
This
does
not
mean
that
they
have
technicality resulted in a
pardon
or written in a destructive
or
"do-
aquashing
after
referral by
the
gooder"
spirit.
They
clearly have a
Home
Secretary to the
Court
of genuine concern
for
justice, the
Appeal, the
authors
establish 70 rights of
the
law-abiding public,
and
instances,
from
Home
Office records,
for
the wronged persons.
They
give
during
the
period 1950-1970, when
their
views frankly
and
while police
people were wrongly convicted. As officers will
not
accept all they have
many
of the cases came to light to say they should enjoy arguing
only
through
chance, they argue
about
them. This is apparently
the
that
these 70 are only a few of the first
attempt
at a general treatment
actual
wrong
convictions.
The
com- of its
important
subject
and
it
monest causes, they found, were deserves serious attention.
misidentifications by eye-witnesses
It
is a pity
that
the publishers
and confessions
or
statements attri-
and
the
authors
did
not
take
more
buted to the accused. care with the English and the
proof-
There
is a good deal in the
book
reading of this
far
from
inexpensive
to
alert
police officers to the circum- book.
stances which may confuse them
CuSTOS
POLICE FIREARMS
ALLEN
P.
BRISTOW:
The Search for an Effective Police Handgun. Charles
C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois, U.S.A. $15.75.
Jus a few years ago a
book
of
this type would have received little
attention in this country
and
those
few who were then attempting to
highlight such
problems
were ill-
received.
The
recent dramatic rise
in
the
criminal use of firearms
and
the resulting increase in the fre-
quency with which the police are
compelled to issue firearms has now
created aclimate in which this sub-
ject can and must be studied.
The
problems of providing
the
best pis-
tol
and
cartridge combination
for
police use is
far
from
simple and
has been confused by masses of
misinformation circulated from time
to time.
Even
more confusion has
been caused by a profusion of
"experts" willing to pass shallow
judgements
on
this most complex
problem. Reliable information has
been
available,
but
the sources have
been
diverse
and
in some cases
obscure.
Professor Allen Bristow's previous
writings in this field have estab-
lished
him
in the
forefront
of
those
ready
to acknowledge
the
depth
and
complexity of
the
many
factors involved. His
approach
has
been
based on reliable research and,
in particular, his case studies of
July 1973
police shootings have set a standard.
His latest offering is unusual in
that
it contains very little which is orig-
inal.
Gathered
together in
one
book
are
the
writings of
many
leading
authorities (including Bristow him-
self) together with some whose cre-
dentials are, perhaps, less well
established.
The
.38 Special revolver recom-
mended as
the
standard
police hand-
gun in this
country
falls
far
short
of being an effective
weapon
unless
it is used with ammunition specially
designed to
produce
stopping power
rather
than
penetration.
This
fact is
well established by case
after
case
quoted by Bristow
and
others.
The
even-smaller calibre weapons some-
times suggested
for
police use fall so
far
short
of being effective weapons
that
even
the
most sceptical
must
revise their views if they will
but
study the facts presented in this
work.
The
basics of
wound
ballistics
are
expounded
by reproducing
extracts
from
such classics as La
Garde's
Gunshot
Wounds,
The
U.S.
Surgeon
General's
Wound
Ballistics,
and
the writings of
Major
General
Hatcher. These works
are
not
all
readily available in this
country
and
288
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