There are many ways in which the criminal justice system may be seen. We may focus upon the information which is passed along various channels and attempt to relate the record to ideas about actual behaviour. On the other hand we may take the view that whatever decisions are made, they are made on the basis of available information, irrespective of its quality. And there are processes which lie somewhere between these two approaches. Information which is believed to be more reliable may be more frequently selected as a basis for decisions, or items regarded as unreliable may be compared and combined with others and inferences made accordingly. For the accused who is caught up in the machinery of the system the whole system may be seen as a network of decisions made by persons in authority, treating him rather like a truck in the railroad marshalling yard. He may have some vague idea of what causes the «points» to be switched, but the location of any «point», whether correctly or incorrectly set, will determine his location at any time in this network.