Qualities of Mercy deals with the history of mercy, the remittance of punishments in the criminal law. The writers probe the discretionary use of power and inquire how it has been exercised to spare convicted criminals from the full might of the law. Drawing on the history of England, Canada, and Australia in periods when both capital and corporal punishment were still practised, they show that contrary to common assumptions the past was not a time of unmitigated terror and they ask what inspired restraint in punishment. They conclude that the ability to decide who lived and died -- through the exercise or denial of mercy -- reinforced the power structure.
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This thought-provoking and well-written book will be of particular interest to students of law, sociology, public policy, and criminal justice administration. - Anna Leslie (Canadian Book Review Annual)
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This book contains original essays written by leading members of the new generation of historians concerned with criminal law and punishment ... the authors cause us to reflect on how the quest for justice and mercy that has characterized progressive penal policies is being eroded in the present climate of punitiveness. Given its enduring theme and exemplary research, Qualities of Mercy will not only serve as an important history for the present, but also as a lasting influence on scholarship in the future. -- Richard Erickson, University of British Columbia A major contribution to the historiography of crime and punishment in the Anglo-Saxon commonwealth ... a profoundly scholarly and at the same time intensely practical evocation of the value of historical method in challenging the cant, myth-making, and simplistic grandstanding of those who see the solution to all our ills as lying in a return to retribution and punitiveness. -- John McLaren, University of Victoria
Foreword vii(4) Douglas Hay Acknowledgments xi Introduction 3(18) Carolyn Strange 1 Civilized People Dont Want to See That Sort of Thing: The Decline of Physical Punishment in London, 1760-1840 21(31) Greg T. Smith 2 In Place of Death: Transportation, Penal Practices, and the English State, 1770-1830 52(25) Simon Devereaux 3 Harshness and Forbearance: The Politics of Pardons and the Upper Canada Rebellion 77(27) Barry Wright 4 Savage Mercy: Native Culture and the Modification of Capital Punishment in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia 104(126) Tina Loo 5 Discretionary Justice: Political Culture and the Death Penalty in New South Wales and Ontario, 1890-1920 130(36) Carolyn Strange Punishment in Late-Twenthieth-Century Canada: An Afterword 166(10) Anthony N. Doob Select Bibliography 176(3) Contributors 179(1) Index 180
Carolyn Strange teaches at the Centre of Criminologyat the University of Toronto. She is the author of Toronto'sGirl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880-1930.
