Reconstructing Criminal Law: Text and Materials

Citation

Lacey, N., Wells, C., & Quick, O. (2010). Reconstructing Criminal Law: Text and Materials (4th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Chapter Summary

The fourth edition has twenty-one chapters in six sections, plus a long bibliography. It is a "text and materials" book, which means that the authors' commentary is interleaved with extracts from cases, statutes, official reports and scholarship. The preface says the book first appeared twenty years earlier as part of the law-in-context movement, and that historical, sociological and philosophical insights are used to explain the complexity of criminal law and justice. In this edition Celia Wells took the lead on Sections I to IV and Oliver Quick on V and VI, with Nicola Lacey in an advisory role. The material is organised by theme rather than by the usual list of doctrines, and each section opens with a short introduction that signposts what follows.

Section I, Chapters 1–3: Images of Criminal Law; Criminal Laws in Context; Foundations of Criminal Law

Chapter 1 starts from popular images of crime in news, fiction and television, and contrasts them with the reality that most of the system's work concerns road traffic, minor public order and low-level property offences. Chapter 2 treats criminal law as part of a wider set of social and procedural practices for defining and responding to wrongdoing, arguing that doctrine alone does not explain it. Chapter 3 turns to due process and human rights, including the effect of the Human Rights Act 1998 on procedure, and to the basic doctrinal building blocks: actus reus, mens rea, justifications and excuses.

Section II, Chapters 4–7: Law, Order and Security

Chapter 4 covers social and political constructions of disorder, including moral panics. Chapter 5, Securing Order, looks at the move towards preventive justice, with measures such as breach of the peace, binding over and anti-social behaviour orders. Chapter 6, Public Order, examines the Public Order Act 1986 and the control of assemblies, riot, affray, harassment and hate crime. Chapter 7, Criminal Law and Justice, draws out emerging themes such as territory, technology and youth.

Section III, Chapters 8–10: Interpersonal Violence; Drugs and Alcohol Abuse; Offence Preparation and Participation

Chapter 8, Offences Against the Person, places violence in the context of crime statistics and then concentrates on assault and battery and the three main offences under the Offences against the Person Act 1861. Chapter 9 treats drugs and alcohol as legal constructions of a social problem, including the uneven mental element in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and the relevance of intoxication to liability. Chapter 10 covers inchoate liability (attempt, conspiracy, assisting and encouraging) and secondary participation.

Section IV, Chapters 11–13: Property and Propriety

Chapter 11 introduces conceptions of private property in social and political thought. Chapter 12 examines how criminal law constructs property offences under the Theft Acts and the Fraud Act 2006. Chapter 13 considers how property rights are enforced, from formal to informal and from civil to criminal.

Section V, Chapters 14–17: Regulating Sexuality and Bodily Autonomy

Chapter 14 explores the social construction of sexuality and bodily autonomy. Chapter 15 covers sexual violence and the criminal process in the light of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Chapter 16 looks at the regulation of sexuality more broadly, including consent. Chapter 17, Criminalising Healthcare Choices, deals with abortion and other reproductive questions.

Section VI, Chapters 18–21: Making a Killing

Chapter 18 examines how the lines between acceptable and unacceptable violence are socially constructed. Chapter 19 considers the criminal regulation of public safety, including road traffic and workplace deaths, and the idea of "real" and "quasi" crime. Chapter 20, Homicide, deals with boundary issues such as non-treatment of neonates and the use of painkilling drugs that hasten death. Chapter 21 covers murder and manslaughter.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Section I

• Law in context: the approach that studies criminal law together with its social, historical and procedural setting.
• Due process: the procedural protections that, together with human rights standards, legitimate criminal law.

Chapters 4–10: Sections II–III

• Preventive justice: the shift from reacting to offences to controlling risk in advance.
• Moral panic: public alarm about a group or activity, used to explain the construction of disorder.
• Inchoate and secondary liability: liability for attempts, conspiracy and assisting, and for participating in another's offence.

Chapters 11–21: Sections IV–VI

• Property and propriety: how criminal law protects and defines property, and its relationship to trust and social order.
• Real and quasi crime: the distinction that marginalises road traffic and workplace death from mainstream criminal law.
• Boundary issues of homicide: killing at the margins of life, such as medical decisions.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A distinctive organising principle. The thematic sections group topics (order, violence, property, sexuality, killing) by social problem, which makes connections visible that a conventional list of offences hides.
• Primary materials with commentary. Extracts and commentary sit side by side, and the publisher notes that each section is signposted for navigation. The fourth edition also adds topical issues such as policing, the Serious Crime Act 2007 and reform of the Fraud Act 2006.
• Depth on context. The opening chapters give an unusually full account of how criminal law operates in practice and how it is enforced, including the point that violent and sexual offences are only a fifth of recorded crime.
• Dual audience. The publisher presents it as suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate study.

Limitations

• Not a doctrinal primer. Actus reus, mens rea and defences are in Chapter 3 and distributed through later chapters, not treated in a dedicated sequence. Students who need to learn the rules for an examination will want a doctrinal textbook alongside.
• Selective coverage. The thematic design does not give equal space to every offence, and the book does not contain separate chapters on defences or sentencing.
• Long and dated. At about 900 pages it is heavy, and the law changes quickly. The fourth edition, published in 2010, predates later legislation.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within this course list, Herring's Criminal Law is an undergraduate introduction to the offences and principles of liability, and Ashworth's Principles of Criminal Law, in Horder's edition, is a guide to principles, history and application. Norrie's Crime, Reason and History is also critical in approach, with a historical emphasis on the contradictions of doctrine. Simester and Sullivan's Criminal Law: Theory and Doctrine is a detailed account of English criminal law that sets exposition beside analysis of the principles that should shape criminal liability.

Lacey, Wells and Quick suit students who already have the basic doctrine and want to study criminal law as a social and political institution. Read it after or alongside a core textbook, not instead of one.

How to Use This Book

The book suits second-year and final-year undergraduates and postgraduates studying criminal law in context. It assumes that the reader can find the doctrine elsewhere.

Read Chapters 1 and 2 first for the framework, then choose a section according to the course: Section II for public order, Section III for violence and participation, Section IV for property, Section V for sexual offences, and Section VI for homicide. Read the section introductions first because they explain the logic of the grouping. Treat the extracts as sources to be read critically, and check statutes and recent cases, since the legislation has changed since 2010.