Reconciling Complexities of Time in Criminal Justice and Transitional Justice

What is it about?

This article examines distinct perceptions of time identified in transitional justice practices in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It positions criminal justice on the one hand as constrained by the passage of time and rightly and necessary timebound. It furthermore explores how criminal trials exclude personal experiences of violence as continuous, circular or repetitive, and instead treat them as breaks in linear time. On the other hand, the article investigates processes of education and memorialisation, arguing for their capacity to capture some of the circularity of harm. Spaces of memory and education can bring two or more conflicts or victim communities together and imply that structural conditions lead to repetitive violence. These processes are furthermore perceived as transcending the present time known to us, with a potential to exist far into the future. After establishing this dual temporal regime in the transitional justice context in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the article seeks to reconcile them. In particular, the article suggests that criminal justice needs an extended afterlife and can be incorporated into education and memorialisation for factual and legitimating reasons. This reconciliation will also help mitigate some of the temporal limitations of each of the three processes.

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