UBC Press Accusation: Creating Criminals (Law and Society)

Much critical scholarship has detailed the punitive effects of accusations that lead to criminalization. Less well documented is the founding role that accusation plays in creating potential criminals. In an attempt at redress, this collection foregrounds how ideas and rituals of accusation initiate criminalization processes. It offers various perspectives on the mechanisms by which legal persons come to be identified as suitable subjects for criminal justice arenas. By analyzing how criminal accusation operates in theoretical, historical, socio-legal, criminological, political, cultural, and procedural realms, this book launches an important new field of inquiry. Review With numerous challenges plaguing the modern criminal justice system, it is important to understand where these challenges originate. Accusation provides a philosophical and ideological understanding of the role of accusation in the origin and structuring of modern systems that would be of interest to a variety of criminal justice scholars. Through this deeper understanding, Accusation invites the development of a new approach to criminal justice and the reframing of accusation to address the way subjects enter and interact with these modern systems. Author: Meagan Ward Source: Saskatchewan Law Review This essay collection from UBC Press, with its clever, simple cover of a large red A, asks us to consider what accusation really means, and how it can be used as a weapon. Author: Amy Kaufman, Head Law Librarian, Queen’s University Source: Canadian Law Library Review Review Moving far beyond the usual laments about over-criminalization and excessive sentences, this fine collection of thought-provoking essays deeply challenges our usual ways of understanding what it is to accuse, and pushes us toward alternative understandings of responsibility, judgment, and crime. Author: Linda Meyer, professor of law, Quinnipiac University, and author of The Justice of Mercy Book Description This interdisciplinary collection challenges conventional views on crime and criminals, examining how ideas and rituals of criminal accusation produce both accusers and accused. From the Author George Pavlich holds a Canada Research Chair in Social Theory, Culture, and Law and is a professor of law and sociology at the University of Alberta. His books include Justice Fragmented: Mediating Community Disputes under Postmodern Conditions; Critique and Radical Discourses on Crime; Governing Paradoxes of Restorative Justice; and Law and Society Redefined. He is a co-editor of Sociology for the Asking; Questioning Sociology; After Sovereignty; Governance and Regulation in Social Life; and Rethinking Law, Society, and Governance: Foucault’s Bequest. Matthew P. Unger is an assistant professor in sociology and anthropology at Concordia University. His forthcoming monograph, Sound, Symbol, Sociality, uses the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur to understand the intersection of the social, juridical, and political implications within aesthetic judgment. Contributors: Mark Antaki, Jennifer L. Culbert, James Martel, Renisa Mawani, Keally McBride About the Author George Pavlich is Canada Research Chair in Social Theory, Culture, and Law and a professor of law and sociology at the University of Alberta. Matthew P. Unger is a postdoctoral fellow for the Canadian Research Chair in Social Theory, Culture, and Law at the University of Alberta. Contributors: Mark Antaki, Jennifer L. Culbert, James Martel, Renisa Mawani, Keally McBride