ABSTRACT
What could be a better time than the beginning of a new millennium to reexamine and assess society’s sacred cows and other social institutions that have been in place for hundreds of years? One of those archaic and antiquated institutions is the current criminal justice system, a vestige from a bygone era. There is a consensus that the system is not achieving its goals. And what better proof of its dismal failure in preventing crime and deterring potential offenders than the record numbers of people in prison in many countries? As a result of ridiculously low clearance rates and of the attrition in the criminal justice process, only a tiny fraction of all those
who commit crimes, particularly property offences, face charges before the courts and even a smaller fraction end up being punished (Fattah 1997). Estimates of the size of the latter group range from as low as 1 per cent to an optimistic estimate of 10 per cent. Something must be terribly wrong with a system that promises victims to punish their offenders and fails to deliver nine times out of ten. So what exactly is wrong with the system? One of the major problems is the system’s notorious resistance to change.
