Negotiating Responsibility

Book excerpt: Kimberly White examines how the idea of criminal responsibility was produced, organized, and legitimized in and through institutional structures such as remissions, trial, and post-trial procedures; identity politics of race, character, citizenship, and gender; and overlapping narratives of mind-state and capacity. She points to the subtle but deeply influential ways in which common sense about crime, punishment, criminality, and human nature shaped the boundaries of expert knowledge at every stage of the judicial process. Negotiating Responsibility provides an essential point of reference from which to evaluate current criminal law practices and law reform initiatives in Canada.