Qualities of Mercy: Justice, Punishment, and Discretion

Anna Leslie is an associate professor of sociology at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Qualities of Mercy demonstrates how state power has been exercised to
spare convicted criminals from the full strength of the law in England,
Canada, and Australia during times when capital and corporal punishment
were available sentences. We learn that the manifestation of mercy,
granted and delivered at the behest of those in power, was utilitarian
rather than inspired by compassion or altruism. For example, the
substitution of “transportation for capital punishment in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth century England was used as a remedy for
an overburdened criminal justice system.”

The authors argue that the modification of punishment is more than an
administrative decision. It is also a social construct. Cultural norms
have been employed in all ages to rationalize and justify certain
punishments and to prohibit others. For example, the fear of terrible
painful physical punishment was once the cornerstone of English
penology. However, punishment that produced suffering in the criminal
also created empathy in the onlooker, a process that reformers used to
their advantage.

This thought-provoking and well-written book will be of particular
interest to students of law, sociology, public policy, and criminal
justice administration.