In the Name of the Law

At a time when the crime rate has reached new peaks, criminal justice isn't working. It is no good at convicting criminals, and even worse at dealing with those it does convict. Meanwhile, the national debate about crime and criminal justice becomes even more shrill, and its participants mired ever deeper in archaic cliche. IN THE NAME OF THE LAW challenges equally the ebbing shibboleths of the liberal left, and the terrifying revenge justice of the right. It asks what can be learned about our society from the way it treats its criminals and organises its policemen. The book concludes that criminal justice provides the starkest pointer to a twenty-first-century hell: a two-thirds/one-third society, with the comfortable defending themselves against a desperate minority with guns and fortifications. Rose argues that these are measures which can be taken to avoid the Los Angeles-like world we seem to be creating.