Restorative justice has become the emerging social movement for reform in the criminal justice system over the past decade. It refers to a range of informal justice practices designed to require offenders to take responsibility for their wrong-doing and to meet the needs of affected victims and communities. This book, based on empirical research findings, investigates whether restorative justice can offer victims of crime more than the formal court-based justice system.

Based upon extensive observation, primary papers, and interviews, Paul Rock examines changes in the forms of criminal justice policy-making within the New Labour Government, observing how they shaped political representations and activities centred on victims of crime. He reveals how the issues of new managerialism, restorative justice, human rights, race and racism, and the treatment of rape victims form a critical mass that required ordering and reconstruction.

Using original field data this book analyzes how courts handle physical violence cases. It examines the questioning of defendants, witnesses and victims, how testimony and physical evidence is used, and what victims, witnesses, defendants, lawyers, and judges think of the trial process. The book offers an accessible insight into the work of the courts and how society deals with violent crime.

In Britain today, if you are in the business of fighting crime, then you have to be in the business of dealing with alcohol. 'Binge drinking' culture is intrinsic to urban leisure and has come to pose a key threat to public order. Unsurprisingly, a struggle is occurring. Pub and club companies, local authorities, central government, the police, the judiciary, local residents, and revelers, all hold variously competing notions of night-time social order and the uses and meanings of public and private space. Bar Wars explores the issue of contestation within and between these groups. Located...

The night-time economy poses one of the biggest crime problems in Britain today. This book highlights precisely how and why this threat developed at the time it did. It charts the rise of a 'night-time high street' and highlights the struggle that is occurring over the way in which such nightlife areas develop. This unique and hard-hitting analysis of social control in bars and clubs, courtroom battles between local communities and the pub trade, and street-level policing gets to the heart of the political debates on binge-drinking and anti-social behavior.

In this provocative new book, Richard Ericson and Kevin Haggerty contend that the police have become information brokers to institutions such as insurance companies and health and welfare organizations that operate based on a knowledge of risk. In turn, these institutions influence the ways that police officers think and act. A critical review of existing research reveals the need to study police interaction with institutions as well as individuals. These institutions are part of an emerging risk society where knowledge of risk is used to control danger. The authors examine different aspects...

In this provocative new book, Richard Ericson and Kevin Haggerty contend that the police have become information brokers to institutions such as insurance companies and health and welfare organizations that operate based on a knowledge of risk. In turn, these institutions influence the ways that police officers think and act. A critical review of existing research reveals the need to study police interaction with institutions as well as individuals. These institutions are part of an emerging risk society where knowledge of risk is used to control danger. The authors examine different aspects...

This work charts the dramatic changes in crime control and criminal justice that have occurred in Britain and America over the last 25 years. It then explains these transformations by showing how the social organization of late modern society has prompted a series of political and cultural adaptations that alter how governments and citizens think and act in relation to crime.

This book uses historical data to directly address modern criminological debates. There is currently a huge growth of interest in histories of crime, and intellectual conversations and connections between historians and criminologists are becoming much more frequent. However, published work which uses historical data to this extent is rare. This book's aim is to draw a wide audience from the worlds of criminology, history, and social policy and engage in a genuinely interdisciplinary debate. This book addresses a number of important questions about offenders' persistence in, or desistance...

In the early 1990s policy changes were introduced in the UK in an attempt to increase arrest rates in domestic violence cases. This book examines the criminal justice response to this prevalent form of violence in the light of these changes. In particular, the book discusses the needs and expectations of victims, and how their choices impact on decisions made by police and prosecutors.