Hard Lessons: Reflections on Governance and Crime Control in Late Modernity (Book Review‪)‬

Hard Lessons: Reflections on Governance and Crime Control in Late Modernity edited by Richard Hil and Gordon Tait (Aldershott, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2004) pages 1-206, Price 50.00 [pound sterling] (hardcover). ISBN 075462216 9 [In this review of Richard Hil and Gordon Tait (eds), Hard Lessons: Reflections on Governance and Crime Control in Late Modernity (2004), I examine the theoretical framework in which the ten review essays are located: the new punitiveness and populism of the control and governance of crime in late modernity. The volume appropriately draws attention to the complexity, volatility and populism of current crime control policies and provides some excellent case studies of criminal justice policies which have resulted in negative outcomes. However, in some of the essays, local cultural, legal and political differences are sometimes downplayed or ignored in the drive to provide a comprehensible account of international trends in policy and theory and there is a tendency to view the case studies as illustrations of a grand 'master pattern' announcing or confirming the arrival of late modernity. My basic thesis is that such approaches underestimate the complexity of the relationships between culture, policy, law and politics and that local differences are significant. I conclude with some broad reflections on the importance of contesting those differences in the gloom of contemporary penal policy.]