By drawing from her research on ethnic profiling, crimmigration and
counterterrorism legislation, Van der Woude illustrates the key role
that discretion has in various criminal justice matters, as well as
emphasizing the need to view and research discretion as an
interdisciplinary concept. Whereas discretion is considered necessary
for the proper and efficient functioning of the criminal justice system,
it is more often seen as a problem for legal and public policy due to
its potential for injustice or for social advancement. For a concept
this central to the criminal justice system, it is interesting to see
that research into discretion and discretionary decision-making is
somewhat limited, or at least isolated in a disciplinary sense. Legal
scholars have mostly been concerned with clarifying the concept itself,
and exploring its relationship with rules and the extent to which rules
sanction discretionary behavior. The interest of many social scientists,
on the other hand, has been in analyzing the law in action so as to
further the understanding of how the words of the law may - or may not -
be translated into legal action. By defining discretion as
decision-making they accentuate different aspects of discretion, making
it difficult to combine both strands of literature . This publication,
however, provides the reader to gain a full oversight and deeper
understanding of the effects that discretion has on the various levels -
and the interplay between these levels - of the criminal justice chain.
This publication will be of interest to academics and students
interested in the study of the law in society. This book is an extended
version of a lecture that the author gave on the occasion of accepting
the Ada and Paul Cornil Prize March 2015. [Subject: Criminal Law]
