Liverpool Law Review (2005) 26: 111 113 DOI: 10.1007/s10991-005-3790-6

Ó Springer 2005

BOOK REVIEW

The Criminological Foundations of Penal Policy: Essays in Honour of Roger Hood, edited by Lucia Zedner and Andrew Ashworth, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-926509-7. This recent addition to the Clarendon Studies in Criminology series is a Festschrift in honour of Roger Hood, who recently retired as Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Oxford. As might be expected from such a volume, its contributors represent an impressive range of individuals, including Andrew Ashworth, Tony Bottoms, Nicola Lacey and Lord Windlesham from the UK, as well as Richard Ericson from Canada, Richard Harding from Australia, Heike Jung from Germany and Michael Tonry from the USA. As a result, discussions of the relationship between criminology and penal policy have rather more of an international flavour than they usually have. During his long career, Roger Hood wrote on various occasions on the research-policy relationship, and much of his empirical research was concerned either implicitly or explicitly with that relationship. Given his position at Oxford, where the Centre for Criminological Research had close links with the Home Office, his interest is not surprising but his proximity to government and need to attract funding for the Centre gave him a unique insight into the relationship between criminological research and policy. Hood thought that criminology had a key part to play in penal policy although just how often its contributions were heard and taken on board by policy makers is another matter. The essays contained in this collection examine the research-policy relationship in various ways, and the four-part framework of the volume helps to structure the contributions. An introductory essay by the editors provides an overview of HoodÕs work, noting its breadth and originality as well as its consistent concern with policy. This is followed by four sections with three essays each, examining in turn: the theoretical relationships between research and policy; the historical development of criminology as a basis for policy; case studies discussing specific examples of policy change and criminological research; and international perspectives. All of the essays are interesting and not just on the vagaries of the

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policy-criminology relationship. Tony Bottoms, for example, discusses the Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) initiative in English prisons and thereby provides the most detailed account available of a major evaluation, as well as taking forward his ongoing work on legal compliance. Sean McConville contributes a fascinating account of the contribution (or, rather non-contribution) to penal policy made by political prisoners concentrating on Irish rebels, conscientious objectors and female suffragists in the years around World War I, making a strong case for the potential significance of such individuals who tend to be more articulate and educated than ‘ordinaryÕ prisoners. Richard Harding examines empirically the relationship between research and policy uptake in Australia, coming to the conclusion that ‘although there is a broad correlation between proximity of the researcher and the research topic to official agencies and the uptake of research findings, this is by no means uniformÕ (p. 466). It would be easy to continue in this vein indeed it is somewhat invidious to pick out certain contributions and ignore others in a collection that is always stimulating. What is slightly depressing about the book is that it reinforces the feeling that criminological research even when it is funded by government is not actually utilised as often as might be expected. With the current emphasis upon evidence-based approaches to policy and practice, it might be hoped that policy would be informed more often by research evidence, but this does not appear to be the case. The Street Crime Initiative, mandatory minimum sentences, and plans for sentencing guidelines, to take three recent policy initiatives, do not seem to have been based on the available evidence (see Tonry 2004), nor does the so-called What Works initiative that dominates probation (see Mair 2004). Interestingly, there is no reference in the book to the emergence of the Campbell Collaboration and particularly its Crime and Justice Coordinating Group (CJCG) which, by insisting on certain rigorous standards in research, aims to be more influential in policy decisions. But rigorous standards for the CJCG means tightly-defined methodologies that rely on quantitative approaches (especially meta-analysis and randomised control trials) and rule out more qualitative methods. The variety of criminological thinking celebrated in Zedner and AshworthÕs collection would not be found if the blinkered approach advocated by the CJCG were to dominate criminology. Perhaps the price of a rich, vigorous, contested criminology is that its impact on policy is rather

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hit-and-miss and it is worth emphasising that criminology has been influential on occasion, as the book demonstrates. Altogether this book is a fitting tribute to the work of Roger Hood who has contributed significantly to the development of criminology for 40 years. His reasoned and careful writing will be missed, though his influence lives on as this book demonstrates well.

REFERENCES M. Tonry (2004) Punishment and Politics: evidence and emulation in the making of English crime control policy. Cullompton: Willan. G. Mair (ed.) (2004) What Matters in Probation. Cullompton: Willan. GEORGE MAIR School of Law Liverpool John Moores University Josephire Butler House Liverpool L7 7DN UK E-mail: [email protected]