ABSTRACT
From an American perspective, this study concerns one foreign criminal justice system, providing some knowledge about the practices of the West African state of Sierra Leone. The main motives for comparative and international criminal justice have been mentioned in Chapter 1. To this account, one might add that scholars have identi¡ed at least ¡ve possible models for studying criminal justice from a comparative perspective. These are (1) the anthropological-historical approach, (2) the institutionalstructural approach, (3) the political-legal approach, (4) the social-philosophical approach, and (5) the analyticalproblems approach (Terrill 1984). Each model has its own strengths, and the nature of any particular criminal justice system may lend itself more easily to treatment by one of these models than by another. The socio-philosophical model, for example, would resolve such questions as the following: What are the prevailing views about the causes of crime and deviancy in a society? What philosophical
approaches are used to resolve or cope with these views in the penal context? The institutional-structural approach, on the other hand, would seek a panoramic view, exploring the institutions, policies, and processes that give structure to a country’s criminal justice system and surveying the organization, structure, and function of the police, the courts, the correctional services, and the juvenile justice process. It is this approach that we will take in examining Sierra Leone. Key features and elements of both substantive criminal law and criminal procedure in that country will be highlighted, providing grounds for a summary critique of its administration of criminal justice.
