This re-issue with a new Preface of a classic work by John Hostettler looks at the political and other social dynamics behind law, order and punishment. A timeless work by one of the UK’s leading commentators and now with pointers to key developments in penal politics of the last 20 years.
This first paperback version contains a wide-ranging analysis of the topic from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day, including: the impact on punishments of power struggles, wealth, superstition, class distinctions, populist ideas, the centrality for many years of the death penalty, modern-day ideas of rehabilitation but above all the underlying threads of social control, law and order and political signals about crime.