This monograph by King and Hendry will rapidly become the standard work on civil recovery of criminal proceeds in the UK. The book gives an excellent and detailed analysis of the use of civil process against the proceeds of crime. The criminal/civil law hybridity is problematized by the authors since it allows for the circumvention of fundamental rights and criminal justice safeguards. It is a compelling read not just for those interested in civil recovery but for anyone interested in criminal justice and procedural fairness.
Professor Elies van Sliedregt, Tilburg University
This book is an exquisite piece of work. It couples empirical research with theory and doctrine and casts a brilliant light on the use of civil process against the proceeds of crime. It is book-ended by highly informed analysis. The first pages disclose an awareness of the terminological, and substantive confusion that infuses proceeds of crime law that is rarely demonstrated elsewhere. The middle text weaves a hefty knowledge of civil processes, rights, and criminal law onto a vexing and very popular tool. It synthesizes and dissects a vast body of law - from scholarship to court decisions to the actual functioning of civil recovery processes in their real encounters. It will be of value to the Irish, England and Welsh, and European policy makers, practitioners and wider communities, but is also instrumental in understanding the fusion of civil process and crime in any jurisdiction. The content offered herein warrants wide dissemination.
Professor Michelle Gallant, University of Manitoba
...an excellent work of critical scholarship. The authors' clear-eyed privileging of the importance of the individual's rights over justifications around pragmatism is likely to provoke mixed responses amongst academic and practitioners alike, and to reignite the debates around hybrid civil/criminal processes and the civil liberties of those who are subject to them. King's and Hendry's careful and comprehensive theorisation and discussion of the mechanism lays bare the complexities and compromises implicit in crime control in the twenty-first century. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the conflict between principle and pragmatism in criminal justice.
Áine Clancy, The Modern Law