York University Professor Richard Weisman is the co-editor of a new book Remorse and Criminal Justice: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives published Nov. 29 by Routledge.
Weisman is Professor Emeritus in the Law and Society Program in the Department of Social Science in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. For the past two decades, his research has centered on exploring the interpenetration of law and moral regulation as well as the interrelationship between legal discourse and popular discourse.
Remorse and Criminal Justice: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives is a multi-disciplinary collection of essays that brings together original contributions on current thinking about the nature and place of remorse in the context of criminal justice. Despite the widespread and long-standing nature of interest in offender remorse, the topic has until recently been peripheral in academic studies. Weisman worked with co-editors Steven Tudor (La Trobe University, Australia), Michael Proeve, (University of Adelaide, Australia), and Kate Rossmanith (Macquarie University, Australia) to bring together a diverse array of contributors who are scholars from North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, South Africa and Australia, and from diverse academic disciplines. The resulting text reflects on the role of remorse in law, for better or for worse; on how expressions of remorse are affected by the legal contexts in which they arise; and on the impact of these expressions on the individual, the court and the community.
The book is divided into four parts – Part one, “Judging Remorse,” addresses issues concerning the task of assessing remorse in the courtroom, usually prior to determining sentence. Part two, “Remorse Beyond the Courtroom,” explores the place and significance of remorse in various post-court settings. Part three, “Remorse, War and Social Trauma,” addresses remorse in the context of political violence and social trauma in the former Yugoslavia and South Africa. Finally, Part four, “Reflections,”seeks to underscore the multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary nature of the collection through personal and disciplinary reflections on remorse.
Remorse and Criminal Justice: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives provides a showcase for how diverse academic disciplines can be brought together through a focus on a common topic. The book is available from Routledge and through Amazon.