This book investigates how defendants are assessed by criminal justice decision-makers, such as judges, lawyers, probation officers, parole board members and those involved in restorative justice. What attitudes and emotions are defendants expected to show? How are these expectations communicated?
With contributors from across the world, the book opens new comparative possibilities and research agendas.
The book argues that defendants, at various stages of the criminal justice process, are expected to show a (more or less) free acceptance of guilt and individual responsibility along with a display of ‘appropriate’ emotions, ideally including ‘genuine’ remorse. It examines why such expressions of individual responsibility and remorse are so important to decision-makers and the state.
‘Criminal Justice and The Ideal Defendant is a dazzling contribution. It takes the debate in important new directions, and poses a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom.’
Susan A. Bandes, Centennial Professor of Law Emeritus, DePaul University College of Law, USA
‘Criminal Justice and The Ideal Defendant originates new research agendas and fresh perspectives on the key problem of remorse and responsibility.’
Julian Roberts, Emeritus Professor of Criminology, Oxford University, UK
‘This fascinating volume reveals the complex role of emotions in criminal justice; a topic that requires and deserves our urgent attention, if we are to find our way towards more honest and more just systems and practices.’
Fergus McNeill, Professor of Criminology & Social Work, Glasgow University, Scotland
‘Stewart Field and Cyrus Tata have brought together leading scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the crucial puzzle that is “the ideal defendant.” This is the ideal collection on the ideal defendant.”’
Steven Tudor, Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University, Australia
‘Criminal Justice and The Ideal Defendant is a ground-breaking international, interdisciplinary volume’.
Rob Canton, Professor in Community and Criminal Justice, De Montfort University, England
Author(s): Stewart Field; Cyrus Tata (editors)
Series: Oñati International Series in Law and Society
Publisher: Hart Publishing
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 275
City: Oxford
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Contributors
PART 1: THE MAKING OF REMORSE AND RESPONSIBILITY
1. Locating the Ideal Defendant: Punishment, Violence and Legitimacy
I. The Ideal Defendant in the Making of Remorse and Responsibility
II. Contextualising the Book
III. Underpinning Themes, Concerns and Concepts
IV. Overall Structure and Individual Chapters
2. Remorse in the French Criminal Justice System: A Subterranean Influence
I. A Continuing Examination of the Feelings Associated with the Commission of the Offence
II. The Criminal Process: Responding to Emotional Deviance
III. Conclusion
3. Constructing Remorse: Interactional Dimensions of Finding an Emotion
I. Introduction
II. Research Design and Data
III. Remorse: Emotion in Law
IV. Constructing Remorse
V. Discussion
VI. Conclusion
4. Constructing Ideal Defendants in the Pre-sentence Phase: The Connection between Responsibility and Potential Remorse
I. Introduction
II. Methods and Data
III. The Conversation
IV. The Past: Criminal Reasons
V. (Self-)Diagnosis between Past and Present
VI. Accepting Future Treatment
VII. Communicating Possible Remorse in Reports
VIII. Concluding Discussion: The Temporal Prism of Moral Emotions
5. The Paradoxical Uses of 'Culture' in Judicial Assessment of Defendant Demeanour and Remorse
I. Remorse and Culture: Interpretative Puzzles
II. The Promise of Culture: Lessons from Anthropology
III. Method: Tracing Judging in Practice
IV. The Cultural Fix: Seeing the Individual More Clearly – or Not?
V. Seeing through Culture: Notes Towards the Cultural Study of Culture and Remorse
6. Cultural Sensitivity Training, Judicial Feelings and Everyday Practice: Conversations at the Edge of Research
I. Introduction
II. The Cutting Room Floor
III. 'Culture' in the Context of Remorse Assessment
IV. Cultural Sensitivity Training: In Search of the Legible Offender
V. Desiring 'Literacy', the Feeling of doing a Good Job
PART 2: BEYOND REMORSE
7. 'Remorse Is Not Enough': Disentangling the Roles of Remorse and Insight in the Construction of the Ideal Defendant
I. Introduction
II. Interrelationship between the Concepts of Remorse and Insight
III. Constructing the Remorseful and Insightful Offender
IV. Scripting Redemption – The Movement from Remorse to Insight
8. The Construction of the Ideal Defendant: Comparative Understandings of the Normalisation of Guilt
I. Introduction
II. The Significance of the Guilty Plea as a Finding of the Court
III. The Role of Courts and Lawyers in Normalising the Inevitability of Guilt
IV. The Routinisation of Guilt Before the Court
V. The Normalisation of Guilt in France
VI. Encouraging and Legitimating Defendants' Assumptions of Responsibility: The Role of Public Prosecutors in France
VII. Public Hearings and the Judicial Verification of Assumptions of Responsibility
VIII. Conclusion
9. Looking for the Ideal Parole Applicant?
I. Introduction
II. 'Remorse' in Criminal Justice
III. The 'Ideal' Applicant for Parole
IV. Does the Parole Board look for Evidence of 'Remorse'?
V. Parole Hearings in England and Wales
VI. The Practical Challenges to Spotting Remorse in Prison
VII. Conclusions: Justifying 'Parole'
PART 3: THE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REMORSE AND RESPONSIBILITY
10. The Enactment of Political Cultures in the Criminal Court Process: Remorse, Responsibility and the Unique Individual before the French cours d'assises
I. Introduction
II. Beyond Remorse: The Concept of the 'Good Accused' Before the French cour d'assises
III. Performing Concern for the Unique Individual: The Significance of Roles and Relationships
IV. Questions of Legitimacy: Keeping the State's (Implicit) Promises?
V. Conclusions
11. Punishment and the 'Blind Symbiosis' of Legal and Rehabilitation Work in the Making of the 'Ideal' Defendant
I. Map of the Chapter
II. Justice Professionals and the Problem of Coercion
III. The Symbiosis of Legal and Rehabilitative Work
IV. How is the Symbiosis of Legal and Rehabilitative/Therapeutic Professional Work Blind to Cross-Contamination?
V. Conclusions and New Research Agendas
12. Remorse and Restoration: The Role of Remorse in Constructing the 'Ideal Offender' of Restorative Justice
I. Introduction
II. Preliminary Considerations
III. Normative Discourses
IV. The 'Ideal Offender' of Restorative Justice
V. A Contextualisation
VI. Restorative Justice to Come
VII. Concluding Remarks
Index
