Criminal justice for the rising middle class
A new book on policing in South Africa wants to go beyond the usual call for reform. But adapting literature tuned for reform to the task of abolition is a difficult needle to thread.
Image credit Gilbert Sopakuwa via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The last 18 months have spurred a turnaround in the public discourse around policing in South Africa. South Africans have long decried the ineptitude of their police service. But the killings of Collins Khosa and Nathaniel Julies amidst the eruption of the popular uprisings against police violence in Palestine, Nigeria, Colombia, the US, and neighboring eSwatini have raised questions about whether South Africa, too, might have a problem with police brutality.
In her new book Can We Be Safe? The Future of Policing in South Africa, Ziyanda Stuurman sets out to bring the public face-to-face with the realities of the post-apartheid criminal justice system and chart a course to a better future. Drawing on her training in development and security policy, Stuurman details the many failures, brutalities, and inequities of the country’s police, courts, and prisons.
Written in a conversational style, Can We Be Safe? models itself as a guide to criminal justice for the rising middle class. Opening with a reflection about the author’s own disparate experiences of safety in Gugulethu and Sea Point, Stuurman points out that, while South Africans are united in their mistrust of the police and their fear of crime, it is often the voice of the least victimized who figure most prominently in conversations about crime and policing.
The outsized role of the middle class, she contends, distorts crime policy, encouraging punitive measures without regard for their efficacy or impact on poor and working people. Covering topics ranging from the Khayelitsha Commission, anti-gang operations, and IPID, Stuurman offers an accessible entry into the recent academic and policy literature on policing and criminal justice, especially that originating from those NGOs and think-tanks focused on criminal justice reform like the Institute of Security Studies.
But Can We Be Safe? goes beyond the usual call for reform, arguing that South Africans will only be able to secure true safety for all by pursuing police and prison abolition. Adapting literature tuned for reform to the task of abolition is a difficult needle to thread. And it is one that Can We Be Safe? does not always manage successfully.
