Legitimacy and Criminal Justice

Based on an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Cambridge in May 2012, Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration brings together internationally renowned scholars from a range of disciplines including criminology, international relations, sociology and political science to examine the meaning of legitimacy and advance its theoretical understanding within the context of criminal justice. In policy terms, the conference afforded a timely opportunity for criminal justice senior managers and researchers to discuss the practical applications and implications of legitimacy for policing and prisons. This resulting volume aims to: advance conceptual understanding of legitimacy in the contexts of policing and criminal justice; to develop a better understanding of the implications of analyses of legitimacy for the practical contexts of policing, prisons and criminal justice; and to recognise the growing number of contexts in which criminal justice personnel encounter ethnically and religiously diverse communities, such as the acute dilemmas for legitimate authority posed by perceived terrorist threats. Attention is also devoted to the growing importance of international organisations in relation to legitimacy, both in its international and domestic manifestations. The volume includes 16 substantial new contributions to this important field from leading political and theoretical scholars in the field, along with the results of several recent empirical studies. Together they constitute an unprecedented synthesis of disparate but leading thinkers in the growing field of legitimacy scholarship and should be of value to social scientists across different disciplines and to criminal justice practitioners.PART 1. POLITICAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVES ON LEGITIMACY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE ; 1. Legitimacy and Democracy in the World Today ; 2. Revisiting Legitimacy, Twenty Years on ; 3. Crime, Justice and Legitimacy: A Brief Theoretical Inquiry ; PART 2: LEGITIMACY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE: THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES ; 4. "A Voice Within": Power-holders' Perspectives on Authority and Legitimacy ; 5. Future Challenges in the Study of Legitimacy and Criminal Justice ; 6. Unfinished Business: Legitimacy, Crime Control and Democratic Politics ; 7. Trusting Authorities: Legitimacy, Trust and Collaboration in Non-Democratic Regimes ; PART 3: SEEKING LEGITIMACY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE CONTEXTS ; 8. Legitimacy, Crimes and Compliance in 'the City': de maximis non curat lex? ; 9. Legitimacy and State Responses to Terrorism ; 10. "Legitimacy Under Pressure" in High Security Prisons ; 11. An Unenviable Task: How Federal Courts Legitimized Mass Incarceration ; 12. The Situated Production of Legitimacy: Perspectives from the Global South ; 13. Legitimacy and the Development of International Standards for Punishment ; 14. Dialogue and Dialectic: Police Legitimacy and the New Professionalism ; PART 4: LEGITIMACY AND CRIME ; 15. Does Low Legitimacy Cause Crime? A Review of the Evidence ; 16. Legitimacy, Trust and Compliance: An Empirical Test of Procedural Justice Theory Using the European Social Survey