Crime and Criminal Justice in Israel: Assessing the Knowledge Base toward the Twenty-First Century

Preface

PREFACE Background The idea for this manuscript originated from several interrelated events. In the summer of 1992 1 took a group of American undergraduate and graduate students to Israel for a comparative criminal justice "studies abroad" seminar. During the preparation of the syllabus for the seminar, 1 realized that the extent of the relative contribution of Israeli criminologists and criminal justice scholars to the world literature far outdistances the smallness of the country in terms of the number of publications in English and the quality and comparative presence of the Israeli material in the world literature. As a result, 1 set out to prepare a comprehensive reference source for the students. About that time, 1 noted that Menachem Amir had published a source book, in Hebrew, on Israeli criminal justice. It only made sense to add a publication which would include all the available sources in English (by Israelis and others who wrote on Israel) to cover the period from the early 60s to the early 90s (not much had been published in English before that period). The publication of this source book became a monumental task of collecting and ascertaining all the possible references on criminal justice, criminology, deviant behavior, juvenile delinquency, law, law enforcement, and corrections. At some point during that process , the publisher requested to add different "introductory" chapters to facilitate the reading of the book. However, very soon it became evident that these actually constitute two separate projects and that the reference source book should stand alone. The source book has been published recently (1995) by Greenwood Press (Criminal Justice in Israel: An Annotated Bibliography of English Language Publications, 1948-1993). Vll Vlll PREFACE The collection of the various reference sources, and the need to conceptualize a typology under which to classify them, rapidly demonstrated the quantity and quality of the extensive work published in English on Israeli criminal justice and criminology. Due to the existence of some unique contributions, and the fact that Israel has been serving for years as a sort of a social science laboratory for comparative purposes, there was a need to prepare a comprehensive volume that will offer the interested scholar and student the state-of-the art Israeli criminal justice. As a result, 1 have discussed this idea with several Israeli scholars who responded with great enthusiasm across the board. The encouragement 1 received confirmed my initial thinking about the need for such a volume, as Israelis are not quick to commit themselves to prepare book chapters since journal articles are more "attractive" as they "count" more in the university system. For me, this became a sort of intellectual challenge and one that should, once accomplished, make a major contribution to the comparative literature on the topic. This only comprehensive work on Israeli criminal justice is expected to provide a deeper understanding of the state of criminal justice in Israel in terms of its historical developments as well as the state of knowledge in this area. It attempts to fill a void by adding a much needed reader on Israeli criminal justice. This book is intended for scholars and students in the area who are interested in comparative studies, theoretical and empirical developments, and in particular, advances in Israeli scholarship in this domain. It is important to note, at the outset, that Israel has adhered to European scientific standards as early as its establishment in 1948. Some may say that this occurred even many years earlier during the formative period of the prestate (mostly between 1920 and 1948). As a result, there was a deep rooted conviction that Israeli science needs to be not merely on the fringe of world developments but form a standard of excellence of its own. Not surprisingly , around the establishment of the state, in 1948, there was a "language war" at the Technion (Israeli's equivalent of major world institutes oftechnology) concerning which language should be used to teach science: German or Hebrew. The "war" ended with Hebrew's victory but it was not easily won. At the time there was a strong tenet among many of its faculty PREFACE lX that German, as the world language of science, should be dominant. While classes were taught officially in Hebrew and it is, to date, the official language of instruction, the dominance of German as the world's scientific language faded away and gave rise to English. Israeli scholars were expected to publish in...