Rough Justice by Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC

Rough Justice by Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC takes the reader on a journey of some of the most shocking, surprising and frustrating cases tried by Joseph at the central criminal court, more commonly known as the Old Bailey, with lessons on the law throughout. Joesph explains the law with the help of four real-life case studies. This book includes a man who is accused of raping and sexual assault of an under sixteen, a young girl who was the victim of exploitation/modern slavery who disposed of a dismembered body, a female victim of domestic violence who killed her husband and a father and grandmother of a young boy who was injured with a shotgun which the defendants are accused of having in their possession. 

I liked this book for a number of different reasons. To begin with, it was great how Joseph used real-life case studies, covering them all in nearly full detail and explaining the law as it came up. This adds interest to the story as it gives the reader the sense of seeing justice in action, as an Old Bailey judge explains. Furthermore, the book explains some complex areas of the law in easy-to-understand language for the general public, which is extremely important as our criminal justice system is a public system, so members of the public should be able to understand what is going on in a courtroom. Even for law students and potentially for those in the legal profession, there may be some surprising things to read about in this book, such as just how badly, or just how difficult, things could get in just one trial. The chapters also seemed to have been of good length, and it was good to see footnotes included at the bottom of each page rather than at the end of the chapter or the end of the book.

However, the book is not without minor faults. When I began reading this book, it appeared that there was going to be some gender bias against males; however, Joseph quicker saved herself for the majority of the book to actually talk about female victims and defendants and what essentially drove them to their crimes and how we as a society may not do enough to protect this group. The gender bias comes back in the book's conclusion, but I would suggest it may be excused, as Joseph indeed makes a good point. Other than that, it would have been nice if the law and Joseph's points had been spelt out more clearly in the chapters. In some of the case studies, it was clear to someone who reads law that Joseph was trying to point out a relevant area of the law, but at times, this was rather implicit when it would have been nice for this to be explicit. This may be because all the explanations were included in many appendices at the end of the book, where it may have been relevant to include them in the chapters amongst the case studies. Saying this, the detail of the case studies should definitely not be diluted down, rather explaining the law within the chapters next to the relevant point would have added further value to the book.

Altogether, I rate this book 3 stars, making it a good book because it was very gripping and interesting, with some really eye-opening and unbelievable real-life cases included in a really good amount of detail. Furthermore, this book is written for a person with no legal knowledge, meaning it has been written very clearly and uses as simple language as possible. I would highly recommend this book. I would like to thank both NetGalley and Random House UK Transworld Publishers for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book in return for an honest book review.