Public Confidence in Criminal Justice - A History and Critique

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.

List of contents

Chapter 1. Public Confidence in Criminal Justice.- Chapter 2. Constructing Public Confidence.- Chapter 3. Deconstructing Public Confidence.- Chapter 4. Archaeology: Surfaces of Emergence for the Public Confidence Agenda.- Chapter 5. Genealogy: How the Public Confidence Agenda Got its 'Hooks' into Criminal Justice.- Chapter 6. Conclusion: Researchers and the Making of Political Worlds.

About the author

Liz Turner is Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Summary

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

Product details

• Authors: Elizabeth R Turner, Elizabeth R. Turner
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2018
• EAN: 9783319678962
• ISBN: 978-3-31-967896-2
• No. of pages: 135
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 219 mm x 11 mm
• Weight: 319 g
• Illustrations: XIII, 135 p.
• Series: Critical Criminological Perspectives; Critical Criminological Perspectives
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Law > Criminal law, criminal procedural law, criminology; Öffentliche Verwaltung, Europa, C, Verbrechen und Kriminologie (Kriminalistik), Research, Politik und Staat, European Politics, Political Science, Criminology, Politics & government, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Law and Criminology, Public Administration, Public Policy, Crime & criminology, Research Methods in Criminology, Crime—Sociological aspects, Crime and Society, Socio-Legal Studies, Great Britain—Politics and government, British Politics, Criminal justice, Administration of, criminal justice, Mass media and crime, Crime and the Media