The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth: The Truth of Who Is to Blame

Chapter 10 draws out some fundamental themes in the book and points to the limitations of the current criminal justice system not only in terms of establishing truth but in terms of realising significant social benefit. Three areas of focus are taken to assess the current system’s ability to find the truth: blame, juvenile justice, and the pursuit of justice. The current criminal process adopts a person, rather than a system, approach to bad events with a focus on identifying individuals to blame rather than addressing the wider problems resulting from crime. Juvenile justice perhaps highlights many aspects of the relationship between truth and criminal justice in general. The chapter concludes by the extent to which the current system’s preoccupation with a narrow historical truth undermines the wider pursuit of justice for all. The pursuit of truth is used as a means of identifying those deserving of punishment, even though the many harms of punishment are as well-documented as the limited effect punishment has in reducing crime. Society must resist the default position that current criminal justice paradigms are optimal either in terms of truth-finding or in terms of responding to criminal harm.