This course is about the institutional arrangements devised by societies to respond to crime. It provides an overview of the criminal justice system- and while not being explicitly comparative, locates the Caribbean in the wider international context offering some comparisons and contrasts with both the developed and some developing countries. It involves a survey of the politics, courts and corrections. This is done against the backdrop of the problems of definition and measurement of crime. General issues of consideration include- how and why the system developed in the region as it did; how theories relate to policies and how the existing system may be reformed and/or transformed. Considerable attention will be devoted to the relevance of the ideas discussed to contemporary Caribbean societies.