Harold Tanner's study of the state of criminal justice in the People's Republic of China in the 1980s is a valuable contribution to the field of Chinese law and justice studies and is in many respects an outstanding accomplishment. Over the last decade or so, an increasingly accessible supply of Chinese legal, criminological, and public security-related documents has enabled scholars outside China in the field of criminal justice studies to obtain a much clearer view of the criminal justice situation in the PRC in the post-1978 period. Tanner's analysis is probably the most comprehensive western study on Chinese criminal justice, and the main strength of the work lies in his attention to detail.