Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Criminal justice in a multicultural society 2. Researching perceptions: the study in context 3. The institutional setting − characteristics of places and persons 4. The defendants' perspective and experiences of witnesses 5. A question of confidence 6. Informed observers: court officials and lawyers 7. The judicial and magisterial perspective 8. A 'cultural change' 9. What still needs to be done? 10. Recent developments and lessons for the future

About the Author

Stephen Shute is Head of the School of Law, Politics and Sociology at the University of Sussex. His research interests focus on criminal law and criminal justice, and he has been widely published in these areas.

Roger Hood was formerly the Centre for Criminological Research and is now Emeritus Professor of Criminology, and Emeritus fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University. His recent research lies in three main areas: the death penalty; race and sentencing; and parole.

Florence Seemungal is a Research Associate at the Centre for Criminological Research at Oxford University. Her research interests include: witness testimony; homicide studies; offender profiling; judicial sentencing; capital punishment; reasoning and decision-making in administrative justice.