This comprehensive work explores the broad question of how the English courts dealt with crime in the period during which the foundations of modern forms of judicial administration were being laid.
a work of powerful scholarship and enormous erudition. It is the most substantial product of the new social history of crime to date.
John Styles, The Times Higher Education Supplement
detailed and meticulousely researched ... John Beattie's "Crime and the Courts" is a massive and impressive study of crime, judical procedure and punishment, and of the relationship between them. His careful analysis will be required reading for any serious student of the history of crime and law.