Product Description: This volume explores the theory and practice of sentencing in England and Wales, exploring issues such as the role of previous convictions, offender remorse and sentencing female offenders, as well as drawing upon a new and unique source of data from the Crown courts.

Product Description: Should public opinion determine--or even influence--sentencing policy and practice? Should the punishment of criminal offenders reflect what the public regards as appropriate? These deceptively simple questions conceal complex theoretical and methodological challenges to the administration of punishment...read more

Product Description: This innovative volume explores a fundamental issue in the field of sentencing: the factors which make a sentence more or less severe. All sentencing systems allow courts discretion to consider mitigating and aggravating factors, and many legislatures have placed a number of such factors on a statutory footing...read more

Product Description: The politics of criminal sentencing has recently crystallized around the issue of whether and how a system of structured sentencing should inform judicial approaches to punishing criminals. Increasingly, structured sentencing guidelines are being introduce to frame judicial discretion...read more

Product Description: Murder is often regarded as both the "ultimate" and a unique crime; and whereas courts are normally given discretion in sentencing offenders, for murder, the sentence is mandatory - indeterminate imprisonment. Since the crime and the punishment come as a "package deal," this book looks at both the legal nature of the offense and the current operation of the mandatory life sentence in the UK...read more

Product Description: In recent years far more attention has been paid to victims of crime both in terms of awareness of the effect of crime upon their lives, and in changes that have been made to the criminal justice system to improve their rights and treatment...read more

Product Description: Despite very diverse approaches towards punishing crime, all Western jurisdictions punish repeat offenders more harshly (a practice known as the recidivist sentencing premium) . For many repeat offenders, their previous convictions have more impact on the penalty they receive than the seriousness of their current crime...read more

Product Description: Public opinion towards criminal justice has become a critical policy issue and an increasingly visible topic of criminological research around the world. This book uses recent surveys to summarize research findings on British public attitudes to criminal justice...read more

Product Description: The last twenty five years have seen dramatic rises in the prison populations of most industrialised nations. Unable to keep up with increased numbers of convicted offenders, governments and criminal justice systems have been seeking new ways to control and punish offenders...read more

Throughout the western world public opinion has played an important role in shaping criminal justice policy. At the same time opinion polls repeatedly demonstrate that the public knows little about crime and justice, and holds negative views of the criminal justice system. This book, consisting of chapters from leading authorities in the field, is concerned to address this problem, and draws upon research in a number of different countries to address the issues arising from this state of affairs. Its main aims are: to explore the changing and evolving nature of public attitudes to sentencing to examine the factors that influence public opinion and to bring together recent international research which has demonstrated ways in which public attitudes can be changed to propose specific strategies to respond to the crisis in public confidence in criminal justice. (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: Taking on one of the most popular issues of the day—crime and the way we make sense of it—Julian Roberts and Loretta Stalans reveal the mismatch between the public perception of crime and the reality of crime statistics. Discussing such issues as public knowledge of crime, sources of crime information, information processing by the public, public attitudes about crime, and the effectiveness of punishment, this book considers the role that public opinion plays in the politics of criminal justice issues...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: On 3 September 1996, Bill C-41 was proclaimed in force, initiating one significant step in the reform of sentencing and parole in Canada. This is the first book that, in addition to providing an overview of the law, effectively presents a sociological analysis of the legal reforms and their ramifications in this controversial area...read more