Overview
Volume II of The Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales traces, for the first time, the genesis and early evolution of two principal institutions in the criminal justice system, the Crown Court and the Crown Prosecution Service. This volume examines the origins and shaping of two critical institutions: the Crown Court, which rose from the ashes of the Courts of Assize and Quarter Sessions; and the Crown Prosecution Service which replaced a rather haphazard system of police prosecuting solicitors. The 1971 Courts Act and the 1985 Prosecution of Offences Act were to reconfigure the architecture of criminal justice, transforming the procedures by which people were charged, prosecuted and, in the weightier cases demanding a judge and jury, tried in the criminal courts of England and Wales. One stemmed from a crisis in a medieval system of travelling justices that tried people in the wrong places and for inadequate lengths of time. The other was precipitated by a scandal in which three men were wrongly convicted for the murder of a bisexual prostitute. Theirs is an as yet untold history that can be explored in depth because it is recent enough, in the words of Harold Wilson, to have been ‘written while the official records could still be supplemented by reference to the personal recollections of the public men who were involved’. This book will be of much interest to students of criminology and British history, politics and law.
Full Product Details
Author: Paul Rock (London School of Economics, UK)
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint: Routledge
Weight: 0.929kg
ISBN: 9781138601659
ISBN 10: 1138601659
Pages: 556
Publication Date: 29 April 2019
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
It would be a mistake for most criminologists to relegate the topic of court reform to the arcane attentions of specialist, insider lawyers. On the contrary, there is rich and abundant material here for theorists interested in the formation of the state and the mutual relationship and obligations of citizens to the state and it to them. Paul Rock has painstakingly ensured that the significance of this re-shaping, dragging the organisation of the criminal courts into the 20th century, is traced in powerful detail. But he has also demonstrated how much scope there is for further original historical research, revealing how little attention had been given by social scientists and historians to the manner in which, for example, the prosecutorial system worked in practice before it was transferred from the police... This is a fine history of vital aspects of criminal justice policy. It illustrates for the reader all the key and persistent considerations surrounding the organisation of the criminal courts, the police investigation of crime and the decision as to whether or not to prosecute. Rod Morgan, Professor Emeritus, University of Bristol, Punishment and Society
Author Information
Paul Rock is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. His published work has focused chiefly on the evolution of criminal justice policies in Canada and England and Wales, particularly for victims of crime, and on developments in criminological theory.
