Changing Contours of Criminal Justice

Mary Bosworth · Carolyn Hoyle · Lucia Zedner

Nov 2016 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Oxford Centre for Criminology, this edited collection of essays seeks to explore the changing contours of criminal justice over the past half century and to consider possible shifts over the next few decades. The question of how social science disciplines develop and change does not invite any easy answer, with the task made all the more difficult given the highly politicised nature of some subjects and the volatile, evolving status of its institutions and practices. A case in point is criminal justice: at once fairly parochial, much criminal justice scholarship is now global in its reach and subject areas that are now accepted as central to its study - victims, restorative justice, security, privatization, terrorism, citizenship and migration (to name just a few) - were topics unknown to the discipline half a century ago. Indeed, most criminologists would have once stoutly denied that they had anything to do with it. Likewise, some central topics of past criminological attention, like probation, have largely receded from academic attention and some central criminal justice institutions, like Borstal and corporal punishment, have, at least in Europe, been abolished. Although the rapidity and radical nature of this change make it quite impossible to predict what criminal justice will look like in fifty years' time, reflection on such developments may assist in understanding how it arrived at its current form and hint at what the future holds. The contributors to this volume have been invited to reflect on the impact Oxford criminology has had on the discipline, providing a unique and critical discussion about the current state of criminal justice around the world and the origins and future implications of contemporary practice. All are leading internationally-renowned criminologists whose work has defined and often re-defined our understanding of criminal justice policy and literature.

About the author

Professor Mary Bosworth is Professor in Criminology and Fellow of St Cross College , University of Oxford, and Professor of Criminology, Monash University, Australia. Her research interests include: immigration detention, punishment, race, gender and citizenship. She is author of Engendering Resistance: Agency and Power in Women's Prisons (1999, Ashgate); The US Federal Prison System (2002, Sage); Race, Gender and Punishment: From Colonialism to the War on Terror (2007, Rutgers University Press) co-edited with Jeanne Flavin, and Explaining US Imprisonment (2009, Sage), What is Criminology? (2010, OUP), co-edited with Carolyn Hoyle, The Borders of Punishment (2013, OUP), co-edited with Katja Aas, Inside Immigration Detention (2014, OUP) and has written numerous journal articles and book chapters on prisons, punishment, race, gender and qualitative research methods. She is UK Editor-in-Chief of Theoretical Criminology. Professor Carolyn Hoyle is Professor in Criminology and Fellow of Green Templeton College University of Oxford. Her research interests include: wrongful convictions; victims; restorative justice; the death penalty. Her publications include, Negotiating Domestic Violence (1998, OUP); New Visions of Crime Victims (2002, Hart Publishing) (co-edited with Richard Young); What is Criminology? (2010, OUP), co-edited with Mary Bosworth; The Death Penalty, 5th edn. (2015, OUP) (with Roger Hood); Last Resorts for Wrongful Convictions (with Mai Sato) (forthcoming, OUP) and book chapters and articles in refereed journals on domestic violence, restorative justice, the death penalty, criminal justice policy and victims. Professor Lucia Zedner FBA is Professor in Criminal Justice and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, and Conjoint Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her research interests include: criminal justice, criminal law, security, and counter-terrorism. Her publications include Women, Crime, and Custody in Victorian England (1991, OUP); Child Victims (1992, OUP), with Jane Morgan; The Criminological Foundations of Penal Policy (2003, OUP) (co-edited with Andrew Ashworth); Criminal Justice (2004, OUP); Security (2009, Routledge); Principles and Values in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice (2012, OUP) (co-edited with Julian Roberts); Prevention and the Limits of the Criminal Law (2013 OUP) (co-edited with Andrew Ashworth and Patrick Tomlin); Preventive Justice (2014 OUP) (with Andrew Ashworth). She has published many articles and chapters on criminal justice, criminal law, policing, punishment, counterterrorism and security.