Conviction

The law-and-order debate has turned criminal justice into a key issue in British politics. Increasing attention is now given to demands by the police and prosecutors for more powers to counter what they regard as over-protective laws and procedures which hamper arrests and convictions. Opponents rush to defend civil rights which British justice claims to safeguard in its bold assertion that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted.

In this critical sociological analysis Doreen McBarnet challenges the very premise of the law-and-order debate. She breaks new sociological ground by focusing not just on familiar territory, such as how policemen operate on the beat and lawyers negotiate cases, but on the substance, structure and form of the law itself. Probing behind the ideology of justice, she points out the reality of rights and powers allocated by law in both England and Scotland and demonstrates from courtroom observation how these are used to build up an overwhelming rate of successful prosecutions. The inescapable conclusion is that the legal system, far from favouring the accused, is endemically oriented towards conviction.

The book has significant implications for the policy debate on criminal procedure and sociological approaches to criminal justice. It also raises much broader questions on the ideology of the democratic state and the rule of law.