Crime, Truth, and Justice

Vol. 14 No. 5 (May 2004), pp.353-356

CRIME, TRUTH AND JUSTICE: OFFICIAL INQUIRY, DISCOURSE, KNOWLEDGE, by George Gilligan and John Pratt (Eds.). Portland: Willan Publishing, 2004. 272pp. Hardcover. $55.00. £35.00. ISBN: 1-84392-027-1.

Reviewed by William J. Vizzard, Division of Criminal Justice, California State University-Sacramento. Email: Vizzard@csus.edu.

Simultaneously published in the United Kingdom and the United States, Gilligan’s and Pratt’s work contains a mix of case studies and essays relating to the role of government boards and commissions of inquiry in shaping “official truth” relating to justice and justice administration. As with all edited collections, this book lacks the sort of coherence and flow that result from a single author. I seriously question if it will find many cover to cover readers, even in the academy. Yet, the structure does offer some advantages. The editors have assembled a number of interesting case studies that may prove useful to researchers in the field of criminal justice administration, history or policy. Likewise the essays may be of interest to postmodernists, deconstructionists, and other scholars focused on the social construction of language.

The case studies presented are predominately from the United Kingdom, although they include studies from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Norway and South Africa. They span almost two centuries in time and address issues as diverse as prison abuse and police failure to effectively investigate criminal acts. In addition, the case studies do not support a common understanding of their role. In fact, this diversity in perspective both strengthens the book and robs it of some unity and coherence. Students and researchers focused on particular subjects, such as prison history or response to police malfeasance, would find cases useful—if they can find them. Because of the eclectic mix represented in this volume, scholars interested in a specific justice topic may overlook this work as a potential source. Critical theorists, postmodern theorists, deconstructionists and others focused on “truth” will be most likely to discover the book. The majority of these scholars, however, will have only limited interest in the details of the cases studies. The failure to include any of the many appropriate American examples will likely minimize interest among US students and scholars.

The opening chapter of the book, an essay by Gilligan, establishes the book’s stated themes: “why are public inquiries deemed to be such a necessary component of official discourse in so many countries around the world, and how should such official inquiries be evaluated?” The answers to these questions, implied by Gillian’s opening and Pat Carlen’s closing essays, would appear to be that official inquiries fulfill a number of functional roles for governments, including providing breathing space or cover in times of political conflict, shaping public opinion and policy, establishing “official truth,” and that these inquires defy evaluation by any fixed formula. My perceptions are that the nature of inquiries varies [*354] with time, place, governmental structure and triggering events, and that the resulting reports or information can be neither discounted nor accepted as truth.

The latter point comes through most clearly in Carlen’s closing essay, which I found both insightful and frustrating. Its central arguments, that official versions of the truth can neither be accepted as fact nor arbitrarily deconstructed and discarded and that the eventual implications of acceptance of any fact is difficult to predict or control, are reasonable and cogent. Unfortunately, Carlen constructs the argument using excessively complex language heavily steeped in discourse and deconstructionist theory that renders the essay inaccessible to most readers.

David Brown’s “Royal Commissions And Criminal Justice: Behind The Ideal” begins with a re-examination of Burton’s and Carlen’s OFFICIAL DISCOURSE (1979). Brown notes with a hint of regret how the ensuing twenty years have undercut the intensity of this Marxist based critique. He reviews a small collection of case studies and concludes that while “absence or denial of alternative accounts” are not necessarily the intent or outcome of official inquiries, these inquiries show an inability to address the routine workings of the justice system. Brown attributes this tendency to focus on an idealized, rather than a realistic, view of justice. Yet, he sees these shortcomings as posing only limited dangers due to the inability of such inquiries to bring discursive closure to controversies.

Phil Scraton’s chapter the politics of official disclosure in the United Kingdom reviews multiple cases and concludes that, while a decision to commission an official inquiry is always a political act and the structuring of the commission is seldom open to examination, these inquiries have the potential for legitimate disclosure and assessment of information. However, such a result is by no means guaranteed, and failure to do so exacerbates the sense of wrong experienced by interested parties.

After examining official discourse in modern societies, the book shifts to the role of such discourse in legitimization. In the first of five chapters in this section John Pratt reviews the role of a series of Royal Commissions and other official inquiries in establishing the legitimacy of prisons as a response to crime in 19th Century England. This chapter argues that the final result of these inquiries was to empower and legitimate a bureaucratic prison system and largely exclude other institutions from prison policy. This would prove a useful review for students of public policy, particularly those interested in the interface between policy and bureaucracy or the evolution of justice and penal policy. The following chapter by Nigel Hancock and Alison Liebling examines recent prison inquiries and shifts the focus to the criteria for a legitimate inquiry. Once again, beginning with a reaction to the Burton and Carlen critique, the authors see establishment according to legal and moral norms as fundamental. Yet, neither establishment nor process will provide legitimacy unless the inquiry is perceived as independent. The next two chapters, by David Dixon and Philip Stenning and Carol LaPrairie shift somewhat from the stated focus on legitimacy. Dixon’s chapter examines [*355] police inquiries in the UK and Australia, concluding that the function and nature of such inquires has evolved significantly with changes in the nature of police organizations. Once again, students of the interface between bureaucracy and politics may find this useful.

Stenning and LaPrairie use the example of Canadian inquiries of justice for Aboriginal peoples to demonstrate the utility of such inquiries for shaping public policy. In these examples government has little interest in subverting the investigation of truth or staving off criticism. The focus is primarily on an agenda of change that shifts authority to the Aboriginal peoples. The final chapter in the section, by Loic Wacquant, shifts back to the topic of legitimacy but away from official inquiry. Wacquarnt makes a sweeping and largely undocumented assertion that repressive concepts on incarceration and justice generated by US think tanks have swept Europe as a component of and contributor to moral panic over crime. Ironically, Wacquarnt attacks the movement toward incarceration and social control on the grounds that it lacks any scientific legitimacy in a chapter that offers little or no support for his assertions. He also invokes the concept of moral panic with the following: “a moral panic . . . . that is capable, by its scope and virulence, of redirecting state policies and durably remaking the character of the societies it affects” (p.161), language invoking moral panic.

The third section, addressing official discourse as closure, begins with a chapter by John Lea on the changing social structure of poverty in United Kingdom and the official responses to riots. The chapter is far more an assessment of changing political alignments and strategies resulting from globalization than a review of the role or utility of official inquiries. Ronnie Lippens characterizes the Belgian parliamentary inquiry commission into police and judicial handling of pedophilia allegations in 1996-98 as a social adaptation to changing conditions and the beginning of an emerging “victim democracy.” The two final chapters in the section are an examination of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a topic well covered elsewhere, and a critique of the post-World War II war crime trials by Nils Christie in which he argues that punishment of the vanquished does not advance reconciliation.

The final section consists entirely of the previously discussed reflections by Carlen on her twenty year old critical examination of official discourse. The greatest value of this work may be found in the spirit of Carlen’s chapter, a re-examination of deconstruction and critical examination. It fails to offer the theoretical tightness or ideological intensity of the Burton and Carlen book, largely because the intellectual community is far less convinced of its own knowledge and insights. Yet, with something lost, something is also gained. Political process, in this case official inquires, can be seen from multiple perspectives, filling multiple functions and producing varied and unpredictable outcomes.

REFERENCES:

Burton. Frank, and Pat Carlen. 1979. OFFICIAL DISCOURSE: ON DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, [*356] GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS, IDEOLOGY AND THE STATE. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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