In increasing public confidence in the criminal justice system focus should be turned on the police and courts, as these agencies have the highest public profile. Public information should focus on the key areas of sentencing, improvements in services to victims, and citizen-focused policing. Several major initiatives to increase public confidence in the courts have been undertaken in Australia. Three major points clarified in this paper are important to understanding and addressing confidence in criminal justice as a concept and as a measure. First, criminal justice or the criminal justice system should not be the subject of investigations. Second, understanding the evaporation effect whereby confidence dries up moving from the police, to courts, to prisons relies on an interpretation of what each of these means to the individual respondent. Third, the best way to improve the confidence of the public within the criminal justice system is to enhance and optimize the perception that the institution is acting on behalf of citizens and representing their interests. Public confidence is fundamental to the operation of the criminal justice system. Using the results of the latest Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, this paper examines how confidence in the criminal justice system needs to be understood as a multidimensional construct with distinct differences in levels of confidence between the three major components: police, courts, and corrections. Figures and references