7.4 CPS.

With a new Foreword by David Ormerod of the Law Commission. Within the criminal justice system of England and Wales, the Crown Court is the arena in which serious criminal offences are prosecuted and sentenced. On the basis of up-to-date ethnographic research, this timely book provides a vivid description of what it is like to attend court as a victim, a witness or a defendant; the interplay between the different players in the courtroom; and the extent to which the court process is viewed as legitimate by those involved in it. This valuable addition to the field brings to life the range of issues involved and is aimed at students and scholars of criminal justice, policy-makers and practitioners, and interested members of the general public.

Within the criminal justice systems of England and Wales, the Crown Court is the arena in which serious criminal offenses are prosecuted and sentenced. Based on up-to-date ethnographic research, including interviews and field observations, this timely book provides a vivid description of what it is like to attend court as a victim, a witness, or a defendant; the interplay between the different players in the courtroom; and the extent to which the court process is viewed as legitimate by those involved in it. While its research is focused on the Crown Court, the book's findings are far from narrow. This valuable addition to the field brings to life the range of issues involved in jurisprudence and will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminal justice, policy makers and practitioners, and interested members of the general public the world over.

Cases are not objects at hand for legal decision-making; cases are not echoes from a past crime. Cases are, first of all, made within compound discourse apparatus, here the English Crown Court and the procedure/s attached to it. This book reveals the legal production of cases including their relevant features. The socio-legal ethnography visits the natural sites of adversarial case-making: law firms, barristers’ chambers, and Crown Courts. It examines the role and dynamics of client-lawyer meetings, pre-trial hearings, plea bargaining sessions, and jury trials. It focuses on the lawyers’ case-making activities, their procedural contexts, and the resulting cases. As an ethnographic discourse study, the book develops a trans-sequential perspective on the interrelated events and processes of case-making – and by doing so, overcomes the shortcomings of talk-bias and text-bias. The trans-sequential approach pays out in detailed case studies on an alibi, on guilt, or the barrister’s notes; it pays out as well in cross-case studies dealing with legal care, procedural infrastructure, or the case system in the common law tradition.