set out the aims of restoring the legitimacy of State institutions and confidence in the rule of law.7 Policymakers should also have an informed view of the goals that drive a justice policy. For example, relying on a deterrence argument alone may raise expectations that are difficult to sustain,8 whereas an overemphasis on retribution may be confused and manipulated by opponents as calls for vengeance and may create conditions conducive to acts of revenge and reprisal.9 A better rationale for prosecutions of massive human rights violations is to convey to citizens a disapproval of violations and support for certain democratic values.10 A strong expression of formal disapproval by State institutions committed to human rights and democratic values can help to persuade citizens as well as institutions of the centrality of those values. Trials can help draw the distinction between conduct that is condoned and conduct that is condemned by the State, which contributes to the public’s trust in State institutions. The underlying purposes of prosecutions can therefore be seen in a positive light, and may offer a more realistic justification than arguments based purely on deterrence or retribution. (Examples of prosecutions that can 70 S ince the positive declaration of President Fox, the Special Prosecutor’s Office has been beset with difficulties, the latest of which surrounds the controversial indictment of former President Echeverría for genocide for the killing of student protesters in 1971. (See “A Promise Unfulfilled? The Special Prosecutor’s Office in Mexico”, June 2004, available at www.ictj.org.) Another example of positively expressed prosecutorial goals can be found in the campaign of President Alfonsín in Argentina in 1983, where the architects of the justice policy presented a serious argument in favour of prosecuting those responsible for the deaths, disappearances and mistreatment of thousands of civilians. 80  eterrence is premised on two notions: (1) that you are likely to be caught and punished for what you do and (2) that punishD ment will prevent a rational decision maker from committing the crime. There is a dearth of empirical evidence to date supporting the view that prosecutions deter the commission of crimes such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Most of these crimes are committed in a context where some kind of institutional ideology dominates those ordering or executing the crimes. The fact that large-scale atrocities continue to be committed in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, despite several advances in the prosecution of such crimes (including the ICTR work on neighbouring Rwanda and the International Criminal Court’s investigations on the Democratic Republic of the Congo itself), may indicate that the general possibility of prosecutions is not sufficient to dissuade those inclined to commit massive atrocities, although this too is based on a presumption rather than on empirical work. 90 T he concept of retribution is a moral justification and does not address the legitimate social or political goals prosecutions may achieve, such as deterrence, persuasion, rehabilitation and restoration. Moreover, criminal justice should not be equated with retributivism. This may be taken to suggest that the pursuit of criminal justice is a matter of vengeance and somehow a morally dubious pursuit. This concept denigrates the dignity of victims as rights-bearing citizens and distorts the very essence of criminal justice, which is to avoid lawless vengeance and maintain the rule of law. Furthermore, even though criminal justice is primarily concerned with the role of the defendant, the trend in criminal justice over the past 30 years has been increasingly attuned to victims’ needs. Describing criminal justice as retributive in nature is therefore an outdated and unhelpful caricature, as the goal should be more meaningful participation of victims in the process. 10 S ee Pablo de Greiff, “Deliberative democracy and punishment”, Buffalo Criminal Law Review, vol. 5, No. 2 (2002), pp. 373–405. This concept is also referred to as persuasion.