Overview
- Offers a provocative, critical analysis of the prominent research agenda and its portrayal in the media
- Presents an historical overview of the history of public confidence
- Draws on recent criminal justice cases which have gained prominence in the public eye
Part of the book series: Critical Criminological Perspectives (CCRP)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
- democracy
- politics of research
- politics and crime
- democratic citizenship
- trust
- fear
- history of crime
- crime research methods
- sociology of knowledge
- public policy
- penal populism
- public opinion
- British Crime Survey
- New Labour
- Foucault
- governmentality
- genealogy
- managerialism
- miscarriages of justice
- Tony Blair
- criminal justice
About this book
In this book, Liz Turner argues that survey methods have gained an unwarranted and unhealthy level of dominance when it comes to understanding how the public views the criminal justice system. The focus on measuring public confidence in criminal justice by researchers, politicians and criminal justice agencies has tended to prioritise the production of quantitative representations of general opinions, at the expense of more specific, qualitative or deliberative approaches. This has occurred not due to any inherent methodological superiority of survey-based approaches, but due to the congruence of the survey-based, general measure of opinion with the prevailing neoliberal political tendency to engage with citizens as consumers.
By identifying the historical conditions on which contemporary knowledge claims rest, and tracing the political power struggles out of which sprang the idea of public confidence in criminal justice as a real and measurable object, Turnershows that things could be otherwise. She also draws attention to the ways in which survey researchers have asserted their dominance over other approaches, suppressing convincing claims by advocates of deliberative methods that a better politics of crime and justice is possible. Ultimately, Turner concludes, researchers need to be more upfront about their political objectives, and more alert to the political responsibilities that go along with the making of knowledge claims. Providing a provocative critique of the dominant approaches to measuring public confidence, this timely study will be of special interest to scholars of the criminal justice system, research methods, and British politics.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Public Confidence in Criminal Justice
Book Subtitle: A History and Critique
Authors: Elizabeth R. Turner
Series Title: Critical Criminological Perspectives
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67897-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Law and Criminology, Law and Criminology (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-67896-2Published: 02 January 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-88506-3Published: 06 June 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-67897-9Published: 04 December 2017
Series ISSN: 2731-0604
Series E-ISSN: 2731-0612
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 135
Topics: Criminal Justice, Crime and the Media, Crime and Society, Research Methods in Criminology, Public Policy, British Politics