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• W1987990446 abstract "Cullompton : Willan ( 2005 ) 160pp . £35.00hb ISBN 1-84392-084-0 A Fair Hearing is a monograph presenting a study that was commissioned by the Lord Chancellor's Department (now the Department for Constitutional Affairs – DCA). This study describes the way white and BME (black and minority ethnic) defendants view their treatment by the criminal courts. Questions about perceived fairness and unfairness by the defendants and court officials, and of trust and confidence in the criminal courts, are at the heart of this book. The study focuses not only on how individuals share social knowledge and make sense of this knowledge, but also on how perceptions may act further in formulating attitudes and beliefs. The authors suggest that studying perceptions or feelings of fair/unfair treatment is no less important than the actual treatment by public institutions such as the criminal justice system (CJS) – as this reflects on issues of accountability and the legitimacy of the CJS. For that reason, A Fair Hearing makes an interesting contribution to the understanding of courts' practice in a multi-cultural society. By studying the relationship between experience and perception, the authors arrive at a conclusion that a larger proportion than expected of ethnic minority defendants perceived their treatment by the criminal courts to be fair. Chapter 1 lays out the background and the rationale for the study by reviewing studies on the disparity in sentencing (for example, Home Office 2000; Hood 1992) and the official reactions (for example, the equal treatment bench book, the ‘ethnic awareness’ training of court officials). Chapter 2 outlines the research methodology, the study's special requirements (for example, the need for discretion and sensitivity) and its limitations (for example, researcher bias, sampling, the multiple sources of perceptions of unfairness, the difficulty of translating results into conclusions, and the difficulty in disentangling views of the court's treatment from views on other CJS agencies). This part could have benefited from a clear definition of perception, and an explanation of how perceptions are formed and maintained, as well as from a more detailed discussion of the concept of ethnicity. The collapsing of the 16 subcategories offered by Census 2001 into three main categories, ‘Black’, ‘Asian’ and ‘White’, does not seem persuasive. Collapsing categories into broader ones may risk obscuring differences between subgroups and is mostly done due to sample size. With a sample size of n≈1,250, this decision remains questionable. Chapters 3 to 9 present the study that took place in 2001/02 in Manchester, Birmingham and South London adult courts. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with defendants, and court officials (for example, judges, magistrates, lawyers, ushers and clerks). These chapters include descriptive information about the distribution of answers and a large number of quotations extracted from the interviews. Overall, there were not as many complaints on grounds of race or ethnicity as expected (p.41) and when perceptions of unfairness were found it was mainly based on interviewees' current experience, on past and others' experience, or on common knowledge (such as about the over-representation of black in courts and prisons and the belief that this reflects some sort of discrimination). Defendants and court officials who positively endorsed the statement of unfairness treatment by the courts associated it mostly with non-verbal cues, such as mannerisms, facial expressions, tone of voice or a look. The authors adopted Tom Tyler's (Tyler 1990; Tyler and Blader 2000) two types of ‘fairness’: procedural fairness (judgment of fairness) and distributive justice (judgment of favourability), using these definitions to differentiate between one complaint and another. Adopting this framework the authors suggest that the complaints were mostly about perceived excessive or disproportionate sentences rather than about procedural malpractice. Chapters 10 and 11 focus on the measure offered by the courts to raise staff's awareness to issues of diversity, and on what still needs to be addressed in the future. ‘Ethnic awareness’ training is discussed and suggestions about how to better court treatment are proposed. Interestingly, the Race Relation Acts are not mentioned here as measures that may direct court practice. Making the language used at the court more accessible, giving an explanation about the decision when imposing a sentence, and having more BME court personnel, are examples of the types of suggestions included. In sum, a smaller proportion of ethnic minority defendants than had been anticipated believed that their treatment by the criminal courts was unfair and defendants attributed unfairness more to distributive justice (that is, sentence outcome) rather than to procedural justice. The shift in perceptions is only stated but not investigated, the authors justifying this by the limited current sources of comparison (the last major study of sentencing practice was carried out in the West Midlands in 1989 by Hood (see Hood 1992)). Although acknowledging that the sources of perception are not necessarily rooted in experience, by showing the gap between perceived unfairness and experiences, the authors neither pursue this argument much further nor suggest ways to better understand perceptions. Given the wide use of memory retrieval techniques (for example, defendants were asked about pre-sentencing reports and the fairness of treatment compared with previous occasions), it would have been appropriate to explain the method of memory work. Another issue that seems not to be pursued is the claim of unfair treatment made by defendants, witnesses and some court personnel, based on non-verbal cues, such as body language and facial expression. And, another important point that is mentioned, but not explored further, is the class and ethnicity interconnection and perceptions of unfairness or discriminatory treatment by the court (p.96). Although the book is of limited value to international readers, it may be of interest to policy makers, practitioners, and researchers in the field of ethnicity and the criminal justice system in England and Wales." @default.
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• W1987990446 date "2007-07-01" @default.
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• W1987990446 title "A Fair Hearing? Ethnic Minorities in The Criminal Court by S. Shute, R. Hood, and F. Seemungal" @default.
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