(Source: Routledge)
Routledge has published the 1st
volume of a new series on the history of criminal justice in England and Wales.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Volume I of The Official
History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales frames what was known
about crime and criminal justice in the 1960s, before describing the
liberalising legislation of the decade.
Commissioned by the Cabinet Office
and using interviews, British Government records, and papers housed in private,
and institutional collections, this is the first of a collaboratively written
series of official histories that analyse the evolution of criminal justice
between 1959 and 1997. It opens with an account of the inception of the series,
before describing what was known about crime and criminal justice at the time.
It then outlines the genesis of three key criminal justice Acts that not only
redefined the relations between the State and citizen, but also shaped what
some believed to be the spirit of the age: the abolition of capital punishment,
and the reform of the laws on abortion, and homosexuality. The Acts were taken
to be so contentious morally and politically that Governments of different
stripes were hesitant about promoting them formally. The onus was instead
passed to backbenchers, who were supported by interlocking groups of reformers,
with a pooled knowledge about how to effectively organise a rhetoric that drew
on the language of utilitarianism, and the clarity and authority of a Church of
England. This came to play an increasingly consequential and largely
unacknowledged part in resolving what were often confusing moral questions.
This book will be of much interest
to students of criminology and British history, politics and law.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Crime in the late 1950s and
1960s: A Preamble
2. The Liberal Hour I – Prologue:
The Homicide Act 1957
3. The Liberal Hour I: The Murder
(Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 c.71; Consummation
4. The Liberal Hour II – The
Abortion Act 1967 c. 87: Foundations
5. The Liberal Hour II – The
Abortion Act 1967 c. 87: Culmination
6. The Liberal Hour III – The Sexual
Offences Act 1967 c. 60: Prologue
7. The Liberal Hour III – The Sexual
Offences Act 1967 c. 60: Consummation
More information here
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