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Ted Leggett
No one can accuse the government of failing to take major steps against crime. While one may question the wisdom or constitutionality of many of the initiatives of the past year, there has been radical change in the legislative regime governing some of the basic principles of law enforcement.
Two general trends are clear: the new laws tend to erode the rights of the individual and re-allocate power away from civil servants. Whether these are positive or negative developments depends on the value placed on a depoliticised criminal justice system.
Civil rights have been compromised via the new statutes on bail and organised crime, and are further threatened by proposed anti-terrorist legislation. The powers of the established law enforcement civil service have been undermined by the creation of a national public prosecutor, the assignment of lay assessors to magistrate’s courts and the enabling of municipal police departments.
Is all this a problem? The majority of the population seems to think constitutional protections extend too far and are hampering law enforcement. And there can be no doubt that many established criminal justice officials, left-overs from the apartheid era, are in need of a shake-up.
But several of the latest initiatives smack of desperation and highlight the government’s greatest weakness as a whole: while it is easy to pass powerful laws, implementation is another matter entirely. Much of the failure to implement is due to personnel weakness or recalcitrance in the field, and solutions to this problem are not as simple as signing a new law.
One way around this is to bring in new workers altogether. The United States-South Africa Bilateral Commission’s recent proposal to import American prosecutors and investigators to re-open cases that have floundered under South African supervision takes international assistance to a whole new level.
Calling in outsiders to perform intimate discretionary functions of government represents a major concession of impotence on the part of the South African state. While we are at it, perhaps we should import some American legislators.
And do we really want a US-style criminal justice system? US Vice-President Al Gore brags that crime in the US has been on the decline for the past six years, a period that curiously corresponds with the country’s re- emergence as the premier economic power on the planet. Despite this trend, the US still has a handgun homicide rate 20 times that of comparable nations.
While South Africa is already competing with the US and Russia for the highest incarceration rates in the world, we have a way to go before we can budget for a criminal justice system the size of that in the US, which spends approximately $100-billion a year on the whole operation.
It is clear the US has opted for an expensive alternative to the European-style welfare state. The number of people in US prisons has tripled since 1980. About half of those in jail are African-American males, despite the fact that this group makes up only 8% of the population. This means that one in three black men in their 20s is imprisoned, on probation or on parole. Is this what we want for the disadvantaged in South Africa?
A strong part of the US’s interest in our crime scene stems from South Africa’s emerging role in the international drug trade. It is important we avoid being sucked into the “war on drugs” in our co- operation with the US – a fiasco that was key in the bloating of law enforcement in that country.
While we might want to import American advisers on building a software or entertainment industry, maintaining an efficient criminal justice system is not an area where the US shines.
If Gore really wants to do South Africa a favour, he could directly assist in building our law enforcement infrastructure by, for example, underwriting the revamping of our national justice database. This would allow South Africa to increase the effectiveness of the present system, while continuing the search for more appropriate policy alternatives.
Ted Leggett is a researcher at the Centre for Social and Development Studies at the University of Natal