Book Review: The Welsh criminal justice system: On the jagged edge by Jones, R., & Wyn Jones, R.

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10575677231170680
• Author: Ella Rabaiotti
• Date: 01 September 2023
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Jones, R., & Wyn Jones, R. (2022).

The Welsh criminal justice system: On the jagged edge. University of Wales Press. 264 pp. $33.41 (pbk), ISBN:

9781786839435.

Reviewed by: Ella Rabaiotti ,Swansea University, Swansea, UK

DOI: 10.1177/10575677231170680

Despite 25 years passing since Welsh devolution, justice powers remain with the UK government

while the support functions, including health, education, and housing, are the responsibility of the

Welsh Government. This “jagged edge”of justice, as referred to by the Thomas Commission

(Welsh Government, 2019) is at odds with the United Kingdom’s tripartite constitutional model

of legislature, executive, and judiciary, replicated across the world and within the devolved arrange-

ments of Scotland and Northern Ireland. The authors of The Welsh criminal justice system: On the

jagged edge (2022), detail the consequential poor outcomes arising from Wales’s unusual and unsat-

isfactory devolved position. In a departure from academic studies of the England and Wales criminal

justice system, they argue that the examination of policy and practice within a distinct and wider

Wales criminal justice system, incorporating devolved and non-devolved responsibilities, is essen-

tial. Indeed, Jones and Wyn Jones build on the work of the Commission on Justice for Wales,

known as the Thomas Commission (Welsh Government, 2019), which concluded that people of

Wales are being let down by the current arrangements and that reform of the system is needed.

While there are scholarly efforts to understand the benef‌its and frustrations of the devolution set-

tlement in Wales (see Williams & Eirug, 2022), until recently there has been a lack of focus on the

Welsh criminal justice system. The poor criminal and social justice outcomes, and the country’s high

imprisonment rate (see Jones, 2020), emphasize the importance of exploring the system separately.

Jones and Wyn Jones’purpose to examine the performance of the Welsh criminal justice system is

ambitious given the acknowledged challenges around data availability at a Wales level. Indeed, this

book is a culmination of Jones’efforts to understand this hybrid cross-governmental system (Jones,

2017, 2020) and Wyn Jones’extensive study of the extraordinary devolution settlement in Wales

(Wyn Jones & Scully 2012). The authors were key contributors to the Thomas Commission

through their work at the Wales Governance Centre (Jones & Wyn Jones 2019). Building on this

and drawing on Jones’thesis, The Welsh criminal justice system: On the jagged edge (2022)

reveals Welsh justice outcomes data, much of which had to be gathered through freedom of infor-

mation requests, as well as f‌indings from 29 semi-structured interviews with Welsh criminal and

social justice leaders.

Organized into seven chapters, the book begins with an aim to “render Wales visible”amongst the

scholarly works that neglect it as a distinct entity from England. The authors rightly identify that

aside from youth justice, there remains a paucity of Wales-only criminal justice research. They intro-

duce the legal context and devolution position, which leaves the UK Government as the “dominant

partner,”despite core criminal justice institutions relying on Welsh devolved services and functions.

They highlight the costs of the current arrangements, not only f‌inancially, but also in terms of a lack

Book Reviews

International Criminal Justice Review

2023, Vol. 33(3) 330-341

© 2023 Georgia State University

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