EU Criminal Justice and the Challenges of Diversity examines how questions of cultural difference between Member States' legal traditions are being constructed, addressed, and resolved in the development of the European Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice. The volume brings together leading socio-legal scholars and criminal justice professors from eight European countries and combines analytical approaches rooted in the social sciences with more normative approaches based on legal doctrine. It examines the construction of a common European criminal policy, explores some of the paths that may be followed by the EU in seeking to cope with national diversity in the field of criminal justice, and finally provides some insights into various forms of legal and cultural resistance offered by Member States to the European harmonisation process. In so doing, it bridges disciplinary boundaries between law and social sciences, and draws in a range of perspectives from around Europe.

First published in 1998, this volume seeks to examine a range of policing techniques which are new, if not in their conception, then at least in their importance to the form of police enquiries in the late 20th century. Some of them are beginning to be discussed under categories of 'proactive' or 'covert' policing: others are termed 'technological' because they depend intimately on the development of the new information technologies. In much of Western Europe and North America the nature of police investigative methods is being transformed. At the centre of these developments are three main trends. First, there is the increasing use of covert intelligence-gathering techniques such as participating informers, police undercover operations and surveillance proactively targeted at 'suspicious' individuals or networks. Secondly, there is the development of increasingly sophisticated information gathering and processing technologies (DNA) and fingerprint data bases, general intelligence storage systems, computer analysis of open source data, the Internet). Lastly there is an extending exploitation of powers to compel private individuals and companies to provide the state with information about themselves and third parties (including the use of information originally supplied to the state for purposes other than criminal investigation). This book argues that in different ways these trends represent a new invasion of the private sphere by investigative methods and a new challenge for traditional mechanisms for rendering the state's policing accountable such as the trial, the judge and the defence lawyer. Bringing together contributions from sociologists and lawyers in Western Europe and North America, it surveys these developments, considers the regulatory options for their control and their implications for legal principles of privacy and due process.

Using empirical research, this book investigates how defendants are assessed by criminal justice decision-makers, such as judges, lawyers, probation officers, parole board members and those involved in restorative justice. What attitudes and emotions are defendants expected to show? How are these expectations communicated? The book argues that defendants, at various stages of the criminal justice process, are expected to show a (more or less) free acceptance of guilt and individual responsibility along with a display of ‘appropriate’ emotions, ideally including ‘genuine’ remorse. It examines why such expressions of individual responsibility and remorse are so important to decision-makers and the state. With contributors from across the world, including the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Slovenia, the book opens new comparative possibilities and research agendas.

First published in 1998, this volume seeks to examine a range of policing techniques which are new, if not in their conception, then at least in their importance to the form of police enquiries in the late 20th century. Some of them are beginning to be discussed under categories of 'proactive' or 'covert' policing: others are termed 'technological' because they depend intimately on the development of the new information technologies. In much of Western Europe and North America the nature of police investigative methods is being transformed. At the centre of these developments are three main trends. First, there is the increasing use of covert intelligence-gathering techniques such as participating informers, police undercover operations and surveillance proactively targeted at 'suspicious' individuals or networks. Secondly, there is the development of increasingly sophisticated information gathering and processing technologies (DNA) and fingerprint data bases, general intelligence storage systems, computer analysis of open source data, the Internet). Lastly there is an extending exploitation of powers to compel private individuals and companies to provide the state with information about themselves and third parties (including the use of information originally supplied to the state for purposes other than criminal investigation). This book argues that in different ways these trends represent a new invasion of the private sphere by investigative methods and a new challenge for traditional mechanisms for rendering the state's policing accountable such as the trial, the judge and the defence lawyer. Bringing together contributions from sociologists and lawyers in Western Europe and North America, it surveys these developments, considers the regulatory options for their control and their implications for legal principles of privacy and due process.

EU Criminal Justice and the Challenges of Diversity examines how questions of cultural difference between Member States' legal traditions are being constructed, addressed, and resolved in the development of the European Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice. The volume brings together leading socio-legal scholars and criminal justice professors from eight European countries and combines analytical approaches rooted in the social sciences with more normative approaches based on legal doctrine. It examines the construction of a common European criminal policy, explores some of the paths that may be followed by the EU in seeking to cope with national diversity in the field of criminal justice, and finally provides some insights into various forms of legal and cultural resistance offered by Member States to the European harmonisation process. In so doing, it bridges disciplinary boundaries between law and social sciences, and draws in a range of perspectives from around Europe.