Negotiating Responsibility in the Criminal Justice System.

• Author: Ferrall, Bard R.
• Position: Review

NEGOTIATING RESPONSIBILITY IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM (Jack Kamerman, Ed.) (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998) 197 pp.

In the sociological view, reality is constructed, not given. Reality changes over time, and our interaction with others is a sort of ongoing "negotiation" of our social construction of reality. Our concept of responsibility is also such a social construction; understanding how or even whether we assign responsibility for events requires examination of the dynamic process of interaction and negotiation. There is little examination of how the construction of responsibility affects criminal procedure, although many operations in the criminal justice system may be viewed as a process of negotiating the assignment or denial of responsibility. The purpose of the essays in this volume is to illuminate the current criminal process by examining the current social construction of responsibility. The societal factors (history, culture, social trends, and ideas) determining how responsibility is assigned, as well as the psychological factors in the denial of responsibility, are examined. Indications are that the current societal situation does little to counteract the individual's impulses to avoid responsibility, or to encourage and reinforce acceptance of responsibility; as a result, the denial and avoidance of responsibility has become...