Respect and Criminal Justice offers the first sustained examination of 'respect' in criminal justice in England and Wales, where the value is elusive but of persisting significance. The book takes the form of a critique of the 'respect deficit' in policing and imprisonment. It is especially concerned with the ways in which both institutions are merely constrained and not characterised by respect. In the course of the critique, it emerges that they appeal to the word 'respect' but rarely and only superficially address the prior question of what it is to respect and be respected. Despite academic interest in the democratic design of these institutions in recent decades, the book concludes that respect is more akin to a slogan than a foundational value of criminal justice practice.

Gabrielle Watson is the Shaw Foundation Fellow in Law at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. Following a doctorate in the Faculty of Law at Oxford (2012-16), she held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, also in the Faculty, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Law at Christ Church (2017-19). In Spring 2019, she held the Inaugural Visiting Fellowship in Law at the newly instituted Cambridge Centre for Criminal Justice. In Spring 2021, she will return to Cambridge to take up Visiting Fellowships at the Centre for Penal Theory and Penal Ethics, and at Downing College. She works on topics at the intersection of criminal law, criminal justice, and jurisprudence.

Respect and Criminal Justice offers the first sustained examination of 'respect' in criminal justice in England and Wales, where the value is elusive but of persisting significance. The book takes the form of a critique of the 'respect deficit' in policing and imprisonment. It is especially concerned with the ways in which both institutions are merely constrained and not characterised by respect. In the course of the critique, it emerges that they appeal to the word 'respect' but rarely and only superficially address the prior question of what it is to respect and be respected. Despite academic interest in the democratic design of these institutions in recent decades, the book concludes that respect is more akin to a slogan than a foundational value of criminal justice practice.