This book provides an analysis of processes of reform, reconstruction and restructuring in the criminal justice field in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the years since it completed a violent secession from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The country is taken as an example of a transitional post-authoritarian society, having emerged from over forty years of single-party rule, as an example of a transitional post-conflict society, having come through nearly four years of brutal conflict between parties who continue to play a major role in the political life of the country; and, in the context of widespread change with the collapse of communist governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe, as a transitional economy, shifting from a more command oriented economy to a more liberalised market economy. These three dimensions of transition provide the background to a range of challenges faced in the criminal justice field and the subsequent governmental responses, including those of international governing bodies in BiH.

The lengthy process of the break-up of SFRY crystallised within months of the country's first multi-party elections when, in June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence. It continues, eighteen years on following the UN General Assembly's request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legality of the unilateral declaration of independence made by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo (UNGA 2008; ICJ 2008). Disintegration has involved a series of conflicts, ranging from the short war between the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Slovenian territorial defence units, to more complex and protracted conflicts such as those in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), between 1991 and 1995, involving the JNA, Croatian and Bosnian government forces, armies established by breakaway Serb entities in Croatia and BiH, and Croats in BiH, as well as other regional groups and irregular paramilitary units (see Malcolm 1996, chapters 15, 16 and epilogue). In Croatia, war ended in a decisive victory by government forces against the breakaway Republic of Serb Krajina. The conflicts in BiH ended formally but without definitive victory for any warring party on 14 December 1995, when representatives of three Yugoslav successor states gathered in Paris to sign the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP).