Book Review: Debating Restorative Justice

• Date: 01 June 2012
• Author: Douglas Thomson
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016811418493
• Published date: 01 June 2012
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

indicates that simple narratives about the death penalty (e.g., capital punishment is an archaic relic of

a less enlightened era) are often wrong. Using engaging historic accounts, McGowan reveals that the

shift from retentionism to abolition is neither simple nor smooth, but treacherous and riddled with

contradictions.

The three remaining essays are more narrowly focused. Legal historian Douglas Hay uses data

from 18th- and 19th-century English cases to trace the pattern of executions and to compare these

to the American experience. Lawyer Jonathan Simon considers the ways in which the politics of

interposition (exercised by Southern governors who claimed authority to block federal desegrega-

tion orders during the 1960s) have also been employed by populist politicians within the debates

about American capital punishment. Finally, historian Rebecca McLennan considers the legacy

of the 19th-century legal concept of ‘‘civil death.’’ She argues very persuasively that social burial

via prison walls, rituals of incarceration, and felon disenfranchisement laws may operate as modern

analogues of civil death.

While each of the sevenessays has its own uniquevoice, perspective, andfocus (Hay’s essay is really

aboutEnglish executions, notAmerican capital punishment,and McLennan’sessay has more to do with

noncapitalpunishment thanthe death penalty), they do reinforceeach other and do contributeto a shared

understandingof the developmentof the death penalty in America. The resultis a powerful contribution

to the ever-expandingbody of literature about capital punishment in America.

The book, America’s Death Penalty, is cross listed as a law/sociology/history title and, to be sure,

it does draw upon the sociological tradition: writers such as Beccaria, Bentham, Durkheim, and

Foucault all appear within the book’s pages. Similarly, legal cases are cited and discussed, including

historic English cases, seminal death penalty cases like Furman and Gregg, and more contemporary

cases such as Atkins v. Virginia (536 U.S. 304, 2002: prohibiting execution of the mentally retarded),

Roper v. Simmons (543 U.S. 551, 2005: prohibiting execution of juveniles), Baze v. Rees (553 U.S.

35, 2008: upholding the use of chemical cocktails for lethal injection), and Kennedy v. Louisiana

(554 U.S. 407, 2008: prohibiting execution of a child rapist). But America’s Death Penalty is

fundamentally a book about history. Readers looking for a sociological analysis of life on death row

will not find it here and readers looking for a discussion of the traditional philosophical debates

about capital penology will be disappointed. Instead, in America’s Death Penalty, readers will

discover a smart and engaging piece of historical scholarship that significantly advances the state

of our understanding of capital punishment.

C. Cunneen and C. Hoyle

Debating Restorative Justice Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2010. xiii, 195 pp. $30.00. ISBN: 978-1849460224

Reviewed by: Douglas Thomson, Chicago State University, Evanston, IL, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016811418493

Rather than a debate, this book offers two parallel essays. The first, by Carolyn Hoyle, presents ‘‘The

Case for Restorative Justice.’’ The second, by Chris Cunneen, presents ‘‘TheLimitations of Restora-

tive Justice.’’ Each author presents an impressive essay that delivers insights and provokes thinking,

but the format of the book results in no apparent engagement between the two essays. Instead, we

have brief editorial prefaces to the book and to the series (Debating Law) and acknowledgments by

each author, followed by Hoyle’s essay and then Cunneen’s. The book offers no dialogue or inter-

action between the two authors nor do their essays build on or otherwise address issues raised by the

other, even when dealing with the same issues. Nor does the book provide a concluding synthesis or

discussion. Hence, readers get to provide their own.

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