Robert Reiner, Social Democratic Criminology
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221101122 |
| Author | David Brown |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
“The privileged spend much of their adolescence and early adulthood attending school,
going to doctor’s appointments, and spending afternoons and weekends in extracurricular
activities, at summer camps, and at sports events. As they enter adulthood, they spend
most of their day engaging with workplace colleagues, assistants, and bosses”(p. 134).
Clair arrived at the summary statement as a way of explaining why privileged client s had
not cultivated any significant legal expertize and therefore deferred to their attorneys, but
the passage reads as though privileged clients were simply too busy making all the right
decisions in life—“going to doctor’s appointments”and what not—to get into trouble
with the law, and by implication, Clair seems to be offering an indictment of choices
made by disadvantaged clients. Again, Clair’s data does not support this claim. The pri-
vileged had plenty of run-ins with law enforcement, and as some of Clair’s clients
explained, they benefitted from networks that included ties to influential legal officials,
financial resources to purchase a better quality of defense, and white privilege.
Chapter 4 deals with the complexities of criminal defense from the viewpoint of
defense attorneys. This is my favorite chapter though my read is that too often Clair pre-
sented defense attorney perspectives in an uncritical way. Again, clients act; courtroom
officials respond. Nevertheless, in chapter 4 we learn defense attorneys (a) take exception
to being challenged by disadvantaged clients; (b) are as concerned about maintaining a
professional identity in the eyes of judges and prosecutors as they are about using
every legal strategy available to their clients; (c) determine legal strategies by judicial
habits; and (d) sometimes give less effort in cases where they suspect the client may
be facing too many of life’s problems to fully participate in their own case. In short,
justice may take a backseat to courtroom culture and professional tensions, and “disad-
vantaged”clients may be justified in their legal cynicism and “withdrawal.”
Chapter 5 is a conclusion with now customary policy recommendations. Overall,
Privilege and Punishment makes some compelling arguments, and instructors should
find the book useful in courses on courts, criminal justice inequalities, organizational
culture, and professional-client relationships.
Michael Lawrence Walker
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA
ORCID iD
Michael Lawrence Walker https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3121-3549
Robert Reiner, Social Democratic Criminology, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge,
2021: 172pp., (pbk) ISBN 978-1-138-23879-4
The title to Robert Reiner’s latest book may prompt a second take from some readers, for
as Reiner acknowledges, ‘there has never been an avowed school of social democratic
criminology’(p. 2). But there has been, he argues, a ‘criminological perspective’,‘a
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