At the risk of being accused of being voyeuristic, one must admit that countries that have gone through a period of major conflict are of considerable interest to students of criminal justice. In the course of the conflict atrocities are often committed, which evoke strident calls for ‘justice’, both from the parties to the conflict and, increasingly, from the international community. Much can be learnt by studying these responses and the grand attempts by the international community to make use of ad hoc international criminal tribunals and, more recently, the International Criminal Court as mechanisms for bringing a measure of justice into dealing with the aftermath of the conflicts.

Equally interesting, however, is the impact that major conflict has on the national criminal justice apparatus of the society in which it takes place. The pattern is that legitimacy of the national criminal justice apparatus is undermined and its efficacy greatly reduced. This provides an opportunity for the international organisations, national governments and non-governmental organisations to assist by ‘engaging in capacity building’, while using the opportunity, often from the best of motives, to impose on the post-conflict society their idea about what criminal justice should entail.

The provision of such assistance is never a simple process. The tension between the internal old system and externally driven reforms often provokes substantive debates about underlying principles, which are avoided in less disputed systems. The reform process is influenced not only by the ideas and ideals of the aidgivers, but also by the relative political strength of the parties involved and, crucially, by the existing criminal justice system that may have continued to operate throughout the conflict. The careful student of criminal justice should pay particular attention to this last factor, for in the process of reconstruction much is revealed also about the pre-existing system and the claims that it made, and may continue to make, about embodying universal values of justice.

Dr. Andy Aitchison is that careful student of criminal justice. Bosnia-Herzegovina is the exemplar of a sophisticated society in which a pre-existing criminal justice system with a clear set of values (which were already under partial threat with the demise of Yugoslav socialism) was confronted, after a major conflict, by a large and diverse international aid effort.