ABSTRACT
All over the West, and wherever its institutions have taken hold, people come together in the name of Justice to seek her ways. Yet what emerges from the criminal lawyers’ offices and courtroom corridors can be very far from the goddess’s own deep order. Victims whose sense of control in their own lives has been fearfully shattered can be made to feel yet more helpless by a legal system in which professionals speak for them and their own voice is circumscribed. Offenders are even less heard and remain mute targets of fear and hate, often locked in denial of the significance of their actions. The families and friends of both victims and offenders seldom have any role. And the overall result of the lengthy, expensive and painful legal process is often only a shallow restoration of individual and social order. Victims may feel a respite of relief, but no deeper sense of safety than before. In many places, more and more people are sentenced to harsher and harsher conditions in already overflowing prisons which too often teach them little except bitterness and new ways of offending. In England and Wales, for instance, no fewer than threequarters of new crimes are committed by people who have already been convicted of others.
