Access To Criminal Justice

At a time when the legal aid system is facing a major overhaul, this book draws attention to the potential and limits of legal aid for achieving criminal justice for defendants. In bringing together 16 experienced writers and researchers who are prominent in this field, it takes the readerbeyond the hitherto narrow discussion over legal aid, and demonstrates its importance in defending liberty and achieving justice. By drawing on empirical research findings and socio-legal analysis, the authors explore the reasons why legally-aided lawyers have failed, by and large, to turn thetheories that underlie legal aid into a practical reality. The book also shows that legal aid can at least be used to ameliorate the injustice of the criminal process itself, however, to do so the potential for criminal justice within the existing system needs to be exploited to the full.

The criminal justice system is a key social institution pertinent to the lives of citizens everywhere. Fundamentals of Criminal Justice: A Sociological View, Second Edition provides a unique social context to explore and explain the nature, impact, and significance of the criminal justice system in everyday life. This introductory text examines important sociological issues including class, race, and gender inequality, social control, and organizational structure and function.

This book considers how access to justice is affected by restrictions to legal aid budgets and increasingly prescriptive service guidelines. As common law jurisdictions, England and Wales and Australia, share similar ideals, policies and practices, but they differ in aspects of their legal and political culture, in the nature of the communities they serve and in their approaches to providing access to justice. These jurisdictions thus provide us with different perspectives on what constitutes justice and how we might seek to overcome the burgeoning crisis in unmet legal need. The book fills an important gap in existing scholarship as the first to bring together new empirical and theoretical knowledge examining different responses to legal aid crises both in the domestic and comparative contexts, across criminal, civil and family law. It achieves this by examining the broader social, political, legal, health and welfare impacts of legal aid cuts and prescriptive service guidelines. Across both jurisdictions, this work suggests that it is the most vulnerable groups who lose out in the way the law now operates in the twenty-first century. This book is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners and policymakers interested in criminal and civil justice, access to justice, the provision of legal assistance and legal aid.

"The fifth edition had to be substantially revised to reflect the impact of recent Supreme Court of Canada bellweather decisions in Grant and the companion decisions in Harrison and Suberu. These decisions require a new approach to the meaning of detention for Charter purposes and to the remedy of exclusion of evidence under section 24(2) of the Charter. Much of the voluminous prior jurisprudence on section 24(2) over the past 27 years relating to the meaning and consequences of conscripting the accused in violation of the Charter is now of little moment. New clarifications and new questions are identified."--Pub. desc.

Introduction to Criminal Justice is the perfect text for students who are interested in pursuing a career in criminal justice and for those who simply want to learn more about the criminal justice system. The authors' combined experience of more than 50 years in teaching introduction to criminal justice as well as working in the field -- Bohm as a correctional officer and Haley as a police officer -- come through in their accessible yet comprehensive presentation. They make it easy for readers to understand that much of what the public "knows" about criminal justice in the United States is myth, and help students learn the truth about the U.S. criminal justice system.

In the Indian context.

ÔInternational criminal justice indeed is a crowded field. But this edited collection stands well above the crowd. And it does so with dignity. Through interdisciplinary analysis, the editors skillfully turn shibboleths into intrigues. Theirs is a kaleidoscopic project that scales a gamut of issues: from courtroom discipline, to gender, to the defense, to history. Through vivid deployment of unconventional methods, this edited collection unsettles conventional wisdom. It thereby pushes law and policy toward heartier horizons.Õ Ð Mark A. Drumbl, Washington and Lee University, School of Law, US International criminal justice as a discipline throws up numerous conceptual issues, engaging disciplines such as law, politics, history, sociology and psychology, to name but a few. This book addresses themes around international criminal justice from a mixture of traditional and more radical perspectives. While law, and in particular international law, is at the heart of much of the discussion around this topic, history, sociology and politics are invariably infused and, in some aspects of international criminal justice, are predominant elements. Fundamentally the exploration concerns questions of coherence and legitimacy, which are foundational to both the content and application of the discipline, and the book charts an illuminating path through these diverse perspectives. The contributions in this book come from some of the eminent scholars and practitioners in the area, and will provide some profound insight into and an enriched understanding of international criminal justice, helping to advance the field of study. This ambitious and necessary book will appeal to academics and students of international criminal law, international criminal justice, international law, transitional justice and comparative criminal law, as well as practitioners of international criminal law.