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This book is a highly useful resource of the place of women in the criminal justice system; a subject which has - until recently been largely ignored by criminologists. I read the second edition of the book, published in 1996. This text provides a plethora of information on firstly, how women are dealt with as offenders within the criminal justice system and secondly, looks at the theories surrounding how and why women get involved within the system and criticisms of these theories where possible.
The sequence of studies contained in this book are enlightening but there are definite gaps in the research up to this point which Heidensohn points out. As well as this, she illustrates the difficulties of compiling any research which can tell us anything specific about gender in relation to crime.
This is a decent read which offers a fresh perspective on the subject of criminology and offers up images of femininity as well as encouraging current research about males to assess the product of masculinity in relation to their research rather than viewing male crime as the norm. Most of all this book encourages us to look at crime and criminality through gender-tinted glasses to achieve a fuller understanding of it.
This amazing book documents the life of a juvenile delinquent, caught by the law before being changed into a person incapable of committing crime. While showing the transformation of a person, it also shows the limits of human freedom in a futuristic society.
The story starts with Alex and his gang tormenting a city with rape, burglary, violence and murder. Alex, a young man, has been doing these things for years and is caught when his friend who are scared of his power purposefully leave him where the police will find him. The entirety of the speech in this part of the book is in a sort of slang which is confusing enough to entice the reader but at the same time easy enough to follow. It is clear from the beginning that Alex commits his crimes out of a sense of pleasure; he enjoys the violence, the bloodshed and the risk-taking and has no plans to curb his offending. When the government is made aware of a new method which will render criminals incapable of committing or even considering committing violent crime, an innocent Alex is persuaded into being a test subject with the promise of freedom. The trial resembles some method of hypnosis and Alex is released to a world where even thinking about consensual sex is totally impossible.
The book is written with great thought put into the dialect of Alex and his gang. The meeting of Alex with the author of a book forces Alex to think about what he has done. I am told the original of the book is missing one chapter, so the book in this case ends with hope that Alex will change his ways.
Overall, this book explores the limits of human freedom and forces the reader to consider whether being 'evil' deserves the sterilisation of the brain that Alex receives. I would highly recommend it.
After having read a fair few Picoult books (she is my guilty pleasure), I can conclude that this one is not much different from any other one I have read. The book deals with a contentious social issue, that of mercy killing or euthanasia. As usual, the book is also centred around two main characters who have relationship problems, as well as a court trial that happens to go luckily, it features 'true love and the characters are meaningless and not at all complete.
This sounds terribly negative, Jodi Picoult is a celebrated author of contemporary novels, I say novels rather than literature because personally I don't think she is an exceptional writer or that she brings anything original to her profession. I believe the main reason why she is so popular is because she writes about interesting things; for example some of my favourite books by her include: a falsely accused sex offender, school shootings, life with a person who has severe disabilities and all of them, every single one feature a person in love who does not treat his/her partner well or cheats on them.
Picoult obviously has a lot of ideas, books by her continue to come out. Handle with Care being the latest example. This book showed nothing new to me, the excerpts of a journal at the beginning of chapters were not interesting and the discussion of euthanasia held nothing that peaked my interest. Perhaps my favourite character in this book was (slightly) Mia, a character who couldn't stay anywhere and had seemed to be all over the world. The book did not go much into her character though and went more into the exceptionally walk-all-over-me character, Allie and her husband who obviously had affection but not love for her. The background about Scotland was interesting but nto overly informative.
Maybe I have finally gotten over my Picoult addiction?
This book was set in a time (the early 1980s) where home birth was still largely frowned upon. It struck interest with me at first as I was a home birth in 1988 where according to my mother, the situation was much the same. She actually had to persuade our family doctor to accept it and the midwife she had was one of the few in Wellington who would do a home birth.
Midwives written in the perspective of the daughter of a lay midwife, Sibyl Danforth who performs most of her births at home and is taken to court for involuntary manslaughter when she is forced to perform a c-section in terrible conditions and later accused of doing this while the woman was still alive, killing her. We are provided throughout with excerpts from Sibyl's notebooks which show her criticisms of "doctor speak" and put across her opinion as a full advocate of home birth. Her daughter, Connie, the narrator is looking back at this period of her life, having now become an OB/GYN and recalling the trial that changed her family's life when she was just 14.
We are drawn into Connie's fear for her mother and more widely for her environment early on as she documents the days after the fateful night when she discovers her mother is going to be criminally charged. The early life of her mother and father is also shown throughout, always outside the mainstream, yet they bring up Connie sensibly and by 14 she seems to be a reasonably mature girl.
I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as Trans-sister Radio, another book by the same author but I think it was definitely a good read and an interesting insight into both the criminal justice system and the process of birth. I would highly recommend it.
