This paper looks at the contribution that reflexive legal organisations located in the communicational borders of the criminal justice system can make with regards to cognitive innovations in the field of criminal law. The observations are based on the case study of the Canadian Committee on Corrections (1969). Through a critical analysis of the fundamental principles and purposes of the criminal justice system, this organisation has contributed to the emergence of a new system of thought susceptible of challenging the dominant one. We suggest that if some of those innovative ideas introduced in the periphery by reflexive legal organisations were to move to the centre and become more widely accepted, a new systemic identity would emerge and help point into new directions the evolutionary process of the criminal justice system.