The Politics of Redress

Crime, Punishment and Penal Abolition

Willem De Haan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781000819892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1990, The Politics of Redress is a product of and commentary on significant developments in critical criminology. It shifts the emphasis from the criminologist as a police agent to a fighter for social justice. The author focuses on the role of punishment in society, in general, and in criminology, in particular, urging the reader to reimagine the concept of punishment, especially penal punishment. The arguments addressed in this book range from a comparative analysis of penal policies in various countries to philosophical debates about whether punishment is compatible with a just social order. With the Black Lives Matter movement, the topic of prison abolition has, once again, gripped society's conscience making this text a vital read for students of law, criminology, sociology, philosophy, and history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: The ‘crisis’ in critical criminology
• 2 Fuzzy morals and flaky politics: The coming out of critical criminology
• 3 Explaining expansion: The politics of punishment
• 4 Explaining Contraction: The politics of ‘bad conscience’
• 5 Penal abolition and sociological imagination: The transferability debate
• 6 The necessity of punishment in a just social order: The justice debate
• 7 Institutionalization of socialist legality: Popular justice in Cuba
• 8 Conclusion: Towards a politics of redress
• Notes
• References
• Index