This book offers a unique look at rural access to justice through a series of personal and professional reflections by leading scholars in the field.Engaging a “position sensibility”, it explores how our identities, class backgrounds, and professional privileges shape research and writing in rural places-and how those rural places in turn shape us.This is an important collection, for while rural justice gaps are well-documented, considerably less has been w...

This book offers insight on access to justice from rural areas in internationally comparable contexts to highlight the diversity of experiences within, and across rural areas globally.It looks at the fundamental questions for people's lives raised by the issue of access to justice as well as the rule of law. It highlights a range of social, geographic and cultural issues which impact the way rural communities experience the justice system throughout the world with chapters on Austr...

This book examines the state of access to criminal justice by considering the health of the lawyer-client relationship under legal aid. In the largest study of its kind for some two decades, ethnographic fieldwork is used to gain a fresh perspective upon the interaction that lies at the heart of the criminal justice system's equality of arms. The research produces two contradictory messages; in interview, lawyers claim a positive relationship with their clients while, under participant obs...

This new edition of the bestselling Blackstone's Magistrates' Court Handbook provides a complete practical guide for the busy magistrates' court advocate. Incorporating essential extracts from the Magistrates' Court Sentencing Guidelines, Andrew Keogh offers all you need in one trustworthy source. Covering all the key aspects of magistrates' court practice, the book focuses on the areas most likely to arise at short notice requiring an instant response from the advocate, as well as on those o...

The new edition of the bestselling Blackstone's Magistrates' Court Handbook provides a complete practical guide for the busy practitioner. Incorporating essential extracts from the Magistrates' Court Sentencing Guidelines, it offers all you need in one trustworthy source. Covering all the key aspects of magistrates' court practice, the book focuses on the areas most likely to arise at short notice requiring an instant response from the advocate, as well as on those offences most frequently ex...

Forensic medicine covers an amazing range of different subjects and no single individual can expect to be an expert in all of them. The Oxford Handbook of Forensic Medicine provides comprehensive coverage of all areas within this complex discipline. Written for specialists and non-specialists alike, it will appeal to practising forensic scientists, as well as lawyers, police officers, and forensic science students. It shows how forensic medicine has been used in specific cases enabling the...

This book provides an analytic overview and assessment of the changing nature of crime prevention, disorder and community safety in contemporary society. Bringing together nine original articles from leading national and international authorities on these issues, the book examines recent developments in relation to a number of specific groups - the disadvantaged, the socially excluded, youth, women and ethnic minorities. Topics covered include: * the increase in local authority responsibil...

Wrongful Allegations of Sexual and Child Abuse fills a gap for an authoritative and considered text focused on false accusations of recent or historical abuse, both as a miscarriage of justice and as an ordeal which impairs lives even when it does not result in criminal charges. It brings together experts from different disciplinary backgrounds and relevant specialisms to explicate the context, causes, and processes that foster erroneous or fabricated allegations and to consider w...

In this book, readers will take a fascinating journey with local prosecutors as they seek to obtain reasonable and appropriate case dispositions while preventing abuse and misuse of the law and protecting the civil rights of their jurisdictions.Prosecutors have a powerful and generally little-understood role in the criminal justice system. Their important powers include accepting or rejecting cases, making decisions about dismissing charges, or moving cases to disposition and recom...

Two centuries ago, American criminal justice was run primarily by laymen. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, and denounced the guilty. But since then, lawyers have gradually taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting plea bargaining for the voice of the jury. The public sees little of how this assembly-line justice works, and victims and defendants have largely lost their day in court. As a...

Cultural defences, i.e. claims that certain aspects of a defendant’s cultural background should be taken into consideration by courts when adjudicating on their guilt or innocence, have been raised before domestic courts in a variety of jurisdictions. This has been a very sensitive and controversial issue. However, the issue of cultural defences at international tribunals is one that has not yet been fully explored. The main objective of this book is to analyse if the International Crimina...

How do individuals, communities, and institutions react to crime, disorder, and social control events? How do such incidents shape the contours of social order and the make-up of society? Why do some crimes and disorders matter more than others in influencing how we think, feel, and act about our security? These are the questions that lie at the heart of Signal Crimes: Social Reactions to Crime, Disorder, and Control. Signal Crimes: Social Reactions to Crime, Disorder, and Sig...