In this commentary, Barbara Holtmann draws from her experience with regard to urban safety, crime and violence prevention and community development. She examines the emphasis on private security, technology and securitisation in South Africa's approach to crime and safety. She argues that despite significant and prolonged spending in this sector, feelings of safety - and actual...
On 24 June 2024 Dirk van Zyl Smit gave the keynote speech at the Annual Council of Europe Conference of the Directors of Prison and Probation Services in Sofia, Bulgaria. In this extract Van Zyl Smit asks what it means to place human rights, the rule of law, and democracy, at the heart of two powerful institutions - prisons and probation. He explores potential tensions between...
This study investigates livestock theft in the Free State province of South Africa, a region characterised by high livestock ownership and substantial stock theft rates. A quantitative approach was adopted, utilising structured surveys to analyse trends, perceptions, and the economic implications of this phenomenon. Through these structured surveys with farmers, the research...
In the criminal justice system, effective records management is essential for justice delivery and the protection of human rights. This study investigates the security and backup measures used to safeguard electronic dockets in the South African Police Service (SAPS), focusing on selected stations in Limpopo Province. The SAPS adopted the e-docket system to address persistent...
Advances in technology have expanded the possibilities of state surveillance, but they have also expanded opportunities for citizens to collect data on the state.2 At present, cell phone videos, WhatsApp monitoring groups and crowdsourced mapping of real-time events are producing a raft of new data to add to older forms of civic data gathering. In the wake of global mobilisation...
South Africa's 1996 Constitution introduced a dual legal system, recognising African customary law and common law traditions. This article examines how culturally motivated crimes challenge South Africa's retributive criminal justice system, and explores restorative justice as a more appropriate alternative. Using doctrinal research methods, it analyses constitutional provisions...
Black Twitter is known to bring to light pressing issues around the world, channel Black narratives, expose misconduct and mobilise social justice movements. With popular hashtags that shape contemporary political and social discourses, the site has encouraged racial debates, cancel culture and doxing activities. Using content analysis, the data examined includes Twitter/X posts...
This year, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) resumed the editorship of South African Crime Quarterly (SACQ). From 2016 to 2024, the journal was hosted by the Centre of Criminology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), which continued the SACQ tradition of publishing high-quality, policy-relevant research and analysis on crime, safety and justice in South Africa. We are...
Collecting South African Police Service's (SAPS) data is critical for femicide research in South Africa. This paper outlines lessons learnt from interviews with SAPS officials during the COVID-19 pandemic to collect data for the third national femicide study. This paper is based on the shared experiences of the research team, particularly the fieldworkers, and provides insight...
The debate on militarisation of domestic security around the world Is mostly normative and conceptual, but there are few estimates of the direct impact of the use of military forces in public security tasks. This paper assesses the impact on local homicides of the 2019 deployment of the South African National Defence Force in police station areas in Cape Town, a measure taken to...
South Africa's Illicit cigarette trade (ICT) Is not merely large and growing but outperforms the legitimate sale of tobacco products. It is operated by extensive criminal networks, deprives the state of tax revenue and, although the measures are in place to curb the problem, they are proving to be unequal to the task. The inability of South African authorities to effectively...
The Constitutional Court's decision in Tshabalala v S; Ntuli v S 2020 2 SACR 38 CC is undoubtedly a step in the right direction towards rape law reform in South Africa, however, this article challenges the court's decision to extend the application of the common law doctrine to common law rape. It is argued that the court could have highlighted the power dynamics at play during...
South Africa has seen waves of collective xenophobic violence and daily criminal attacks targeting foreign migrants. This study interviewed foreign nationals from African countries living in Durban. Through the lens of strain theory, it explores possible solutions to combat violence against foreign nationals in South Africa. The findings suggest the need to address poverty...
This article argues that by developing domestic violence laws to include and protect individual companion animals in the home, it might be possible to prevent violence against other victims in the home. Protecting a companion animal from persistent violence by, for example, having properly integrated reporting systems between government departments, could protect various...
In this article, we investigate contextual and situational circumstances of protest events that record injurious outcomes for civilians and examine how these differ from protests which do not record such outcomes. Using the IRIS database, we examine how contextual factors, including protest period, protest location, reason for protest, and situational factors, such as type of...
Danger is an integral part of the fabric of South African society. Yearly statistics regularly underscore the extent of danger experienced through reported acts of violence. As generally office bound executives, senior police officers rarely encounter this violence to the same extent as frontline officers.2 These police leaders are ultimately responsible for the strategies and...
This research project involved planning and implementing a restorative justice education programme with prison inmates in Lesotho aimed at restoring their self-worth and dignity, and to evaluate its outcomes. The project began with focus group discussions with first-time offenders, repeat offenders and ex-inmates to identify the main challenges faced by ex-inmates. It was found...
This article explores the nature and causes of prisoner protests, looking at it first from a sociological perspective and second, a rights perspective. The fact that people end up in prison following due process does not mean that their imprisonment is not a contested arena in the sense that prisoners are generally aware of their rights, even when curtailed. Importantly, this...
South Africa faces high levels of crime. The Saldanha Bay Municipality, the setting of this study, is laden with poverty, unemployment and gangsterism that deprive quality of life and contribute to social ills. While crime management and prevention strategies require information regarding crime trends, this information for the Saldanha Bay Municipality area is limited. Hence, the...
South Africa faces high levels of crime. The Saldanha Bay Municipality, the setting of this study, is laden with poverty, unemployment and gangsterism that deprive quality of life and contribute to social ills. While crime management and prevention strategies require information regarding crime trends, this information for the Saldanha Bay Municipality area is limited. Hence, the...
When contemplating whether to introduce disability hate crime as a new substantive offence or as a penalty enhancement of existing crimes, legislators should consider the peculiarities of reporting, investigating and prosecuting hate crimes perpetrated against disabled people. This article argues that existing laws on sexual offences, domestic violence, harassment, and unfair...
Mandatory reporting laws are a controversial mechanism that require members of particular occupations to report cases of serious child maltreatment that they encounter in the course of their work to welfare or law enforcement agencies. In April 2019 a video went viral in which a woman filmed her colleague beating toddlers at a crèche in Gauteng. The crèche was closed, and arrests...