Editorial

But how we get our message across now must be different from 60 years ago and different from the early 1950's when the Institute founded the British Journal of Criminology.

The members' Bulletin has served ISTD members well; Criminal Justice Matters will match its contribution and will offer much more. But changing a format so firmly rooted in ISTD tradition had to be done carefully. We knew we must not shock members who were familiar with the old style, but must also speak to new acquaintances; we must not spend large sums on design and production, but must come up with something solid professional and attractive; we must not duplicate what others in the criminal justice field are already producing but must provide a readable and novel magazine for all those concerned about crime.

The Editorial Board has been meeting since last September to give some shape to these aspirations.

There are hundreds of thousands of people working in the criminal justice system who want digestible information about what their 'partners against crime' in other parts of the system are doing. An idea was born - an agency and issue focussed magazine combined with 'in-house' news of ISTD activities. So far so good but where should we start?

We settled on key decision makers in the system — the Magistracy and the Police, for our first two issues.

Before taking up my responsibilities with ISTD two years ago, I worked with young offenders in Hammersmith and Lambeth. For most of that time, I and my colleagues were rather in awe of magistrates, who seemed to have pretty well total power whether or not to whisk away the kids with whom we had developed a rapport. "I have listened very carefully to what your social worker has had to say; however....". We wait for the axe to fall.

But when meeting magistrates outside the courtroom drama, a rather different picture emerges — they frequently feel themselves to be the ones who are powerless. Indeed they often feel their own authority to be rather limited; they may find the Clerk to be too domineering, they think their legal powers are too narrow to allow them to do what they know would be best and social workers and probation officers do not carry out the Orders of the Court. On a bad day they may feel they are victims of some kind of conspiracy. Terence Morris's article gives a fascinating insight into the world behind the retiring room door.

With this magazine we wish to open other doors too. Doors to the police, prisons the legal profession, the higher judiciary, academic criminology, probation, social work.

Why are we doing it? Because CRIMINAL JUSTICE MATTERS.