ABSTRACT
The criminal law process can be seen as a moral arena where the boundaries between good and bad are established and maintained. It has been proposed that the law and morality mutually influence each other in the sense that the elite that makes laws does not usually ignore the dominant moral culture, and that the criminal law process confirms and sometimes leads morality (cf. Garland, 1990, p. 53). Thus those who consider crime to be a result of 'moral decay' may argue that this can be remedied by intensifying the moral message conveyed by the criminal justice system. However, it has also been argued that the criminal law system itself cannot produce moral authority, it can only confirm the existing moral order. A strong moral order, therefore, only needs symbolic punishment to maintain itself, while a weak moral authority must take recourse to coercion (Garland, op. cit., p. 60; Hart, 1961, p. 197). This supports the idea that coercion and morality are intrinsically irreconcilable (Hart, 1963), and that there are limitations to the power of the criminal law system to manipulate morality. Obviously the criminal law system cannot force offenders to become better persons or to develop a moral consciousness.
