The Third Way and Beyond: Criminal and Social Justice in England

Reviews the book, Criminal and Social Justice by Dee Cook (see record 2006-07609-000), characterizing the book as challenging, at times tedious, but also compelling. It is an attack on New Labor policies in Britain. Cook believes the concepts of criminal and social justice are inseparable and that it is the rhetoric, not the science, that is critical for social policy. The core issues in this book focus on how to get past single-issue parties and thesis-antithesis thinking to a "Third Way" and beyond. The Third Way, introduced by the British government under Blair, tries to get beyond polarity in thinking and introduce pragmatic solutions to complex social policy issues, in this case, the criminal justice system. This is done at the expense of social justice in its widest sense. Cook begins with the premise that there are several classes of rights (e.g., civil and political, social and economic, environmental, and human rights) that we all participate in. Although "the values of the Third Way center on rights, responsibilities, democracy and inclusion" (p. 180), Cook points to the way exclusion and a demonizing of "the other" disenfranchise most minorities in Britain from participating in this new government by rhetoric. Because the main pathway to inclusion is paid work, New Labor policies exclude those who are not engaged in paid work from its benefits. In effect, in Britain and the United States, one's experience of justice is "patterned along the lines of income, wealth, gender, 'race', age and 'otherness'" (p. 180). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)