Criminal Justice by Ursula Smartt

 Criminal Justice by Ursula Smartt is an incredible course companion and revision guide which is great for students of criminology, criminal justice and law. It looks at all the key areas of the criminal justice system at a basic level including the different courts, types of sentences and reasons why people offend. As well as this, there is also a designated section on exams, revision and learning to aid students in their lectures, tutorials, independent study as well as all their assessments including examinations and coursework. This makes a great book to students whether they are yet to start their degree course, currently learning the content or when it comes to revision. This would also be an excellent book for students who are studying Criminology at A-Level or Criminology in general at any level.

I enjoyed this book because it gave a good outline and basic understanding of the criminal justice system and all the different elements and theories which make up the study of this area. This includes touching on Psychology, Sociology and Law all from a criminal justice lens. This book does a good job at providing very basic information about the key theories and writers in this area and the key organisations which make up our criminal justice system.

Although this is a good book, there are a number of criticisms. First of all, although this is a revision/companion book, it would be nice if the book explained key theories in more detail and also referred to a greater number of theories in the study of criminology. Therefore, it lacks the detail and breadth of knowledge needed by Criminology students at both A-Level and degree level. As well as this, this book is unfortunately very out of date. Not only many of the laws have changed but certain organisations and surveys listed in this book no longer exist and have been replaced. It would therefore be great to see an updated version of this book.

Altogether, it is with regret that I will need to rate this book 2 stars. This is a really good book and I would indeed recommend the book to many students and institutions because of the holistic nature of the content. However, due to this book being so out of date, it is not possible for me to give a higher rating at this time as it would make this a very misleading review. Some of the content is no longer relevant, some of the content is still relevant. I do fully recommend this book but would love to see an updated version.