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Abstract
Crime presents a fundamental challenge in South Africa. Particularly disturbing is the prevalence of violence committed by and against young people. The main purpose of this article is to look at how South Africa should deal with the issue of youth violence. It argues that while structural violence constitutes a significant contextual cause of the phenomenon, a more proximate and specific cause lies in young people’s exposure to direct violence in their schools, homes and communities. In many cases, therefore, simply sending young people to prison – where they may experience even greater levels of violence – is not the answer. This article thus examines the potential merits of restorative justice as a response to the problem of youth violence, focusing particularly on the 2009 Child Justice Act. This research is based on fieldwork in South Africa and draws upon both the author’s qualitative interview data and a range of surveys with young people conducted by the Center for Justice and Crime Prevention in Cape Town.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank all those who helped me with this research. Special thanks go to the Center for Justice and Crime Prevention and its director, Patrick Burton. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and very useful comments.
Notes
1. Russell (Citation2009, p. 110), for example, writes that ‘In 2007 there were over nineteen thousand murders and more than fifty thousand reported rapes, and more than eighteen thousand people were the victims of violent robberies, including the highjacking of cars.’
2. Leoschut (Citation2009b) notes that, ‘… young people in South Africa are still being victimised at rates significantly higher than those observed among their adult counterparts’ (Citation2009a, p. 2). According to a lifestyle survey conducted by the Cape Town-based CJCP, for example, in the 12 months between February 2008 and February 2009, 27% of the 4409 respondents (between 12 and 22 years old) said that they had been a victim of crime. The two most frequently mentioned crimes were theft (10.7%) and assault (8.4%) (Leoschut, Citation2009b, p. 33).
3. To cite Daly (Citation2008, p. 143), ‘… all justice practices, including RJ [restorative justice], are limited.’
4. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (Citation2002, para. 19), ‘… restorative justice practices should be seen as complementing established justice systems and not as a replacement for them’.
5. Gabbay (Citation2005, p. 357) underlines that ‘The restorative justice paradigm shifts the traditional view of crime from the violated norm to the harm caused to the individuals most affected by the crime’.
6. According to Altbeker (Citation2007, p. 66), ‘… crime, and the fear it generates, has helped to sustain the racist fear of black people …’
7. Mike Batley and Tshegofatso Maswabi were interviewed in a coffee shop in Sunnyside, Pretoria.
8. The issue of child soldiers is one obvious example (see, e.g. Harris, Citation2010). On the subject of children and violence, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, an independent expert for the United Nations, produced a very comprehensive report in 2006, looking at the global problem of violence against children (Pinheiro, Citation2006a, Citation2006b).
9. Galtung (Citation1969, p. 173) observes that, ‘Structural violence is silent, it does not show …’
10. The term ‘colored’ is in common usage in South Africa and is widely accepted. It is therefore used in this article.
11. In 1966, in accordance with the 1950 Group Areas Act, which divided the country into ethnically distinct areas, District Six in Cape Town was proclaimed as a ‘whites-only’ area. By 1982, over 60,000 people had been forcibly uprooted from District Six and moved to the wind-swept Cape Flats. In central Cape Town, the District Six Museum chronicles the experiences of those who endured these forced removals. The Flats, whose inhabitants are exclusively blacks and coloreds, are a sprawling mass of shacks, informal settlements and makeshift dwellings. Situated next to the airport, they are one of the first sights to greet visitors to the city.
12. Guguletu and Nyanga were built in 1945 to house an influx of black workers who migrated to the city looking to find employment. Today, the townships are depressing, overcrowded places where living conditions are poor and where crime and social problems – including gangs, drugs, and alcoholism – are rife.
13. The Gini coefficient measures inequality within a country, with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 representing perfect inequality.
14. The Rand is South Africa’s national currency.
15. According to Aliber (Citation2003, p. 473), ‘… there remain significant gaps in our knowledge about the incidence and causes of poverty, and even greater gaps in our knowledge of what practical measures work’.
16. Even some of the most rudimentary township dwellings are often surrounded by some sort of fencing although less as a security measure than to keep out the neighbors’ goats.
17. According to the results of the CJCP’s National School Violence Study in 2007, 34.5% of learners in secondary schools personally knew people who had been drunk at school, 32.4% personally knew people who had been high at school and 52.3% personally knew people who smoked dagga (marijuana) at school (Burton, Citation2008b, p. 47).
18. Echoing this point, Pinheiro’s (Citation2006a, p. 111) report on violence against children throughout the world underlines that ‘The levels and patterns of violence in schools often reflect the levels and patterns of violence in countries, communities and families’.
19. The author was given this information by a local community worker during a visit to Imizamo Yethu on 14 August 2010.
20. See Note 11.
21. In Pollsmoor prison, for example, some 25 km from Cape Town, ‘… the ratio of guards to prisoners [more than 7,000] is roughly 1:100 … With such a dangerously low ratio of guards to guarded, the warders in Pollsmoor don’t even carry guns – the risk of inmates snatching them is too great’ (Kemp, Citation2008, p. 179).
22. Of these, 423 were between the ages of 14 and 18 and 22,851 were between 18 and 25. Since 2005, the number of sentenced detainees has been increasing in South Africa but so too has the number of detainees awaiting trial. For example, while there were 44,936 detainees awaiting trial in 2005, this figure rose to 49,802 in 2008 (Presidency of the Republic of South Africa, Citation2009, p. 66). Within the total prison population in South Africa, as of 31 May 2010, there were 112,466 sentenced offenders and 49,030 detainees awaiting trial (Department of Correctional Services South Africa, Citation2010).
23. In 2006, the South African Supreme Court of Appeal remarked that ‘[h]istorically the South African justice system has never had a separate, self-contained and compartmentalized system for dealing with child offenders. Our justice system has generally treated child offenders as smaller versions of adult offenders’ (cited in Skelton, Citation2011, p. 417).
24. Bazemore and Umbreit (Citation1995, p. 300) underline that ‘Retributive justice … may have several counterdeterrent effects on offenders, including stigmatization, humiliation and isolation that may minimize prospects for regaining self-respect and the respect of the community.’
27. This is in contrast to the punitive criminal justice system, where ‘At no time is he [the offender] encouraged to be responsible or to make decisions which can positively improve his situation’ (Dissel, Citation1997, p. 6).
28. On the issue of restorative justice and recidivism, Gabbay (Citation2005, p. 366) points out that ‘Currently, most empirical studies conducted in this area show that restorative processes have a positive effect on recidivism rates’ (see, e.g. Latimer, Dowden, & Muise, Citation2005). Gabbay (Citation2005, p. 366), however, notes that ‘some studies do not share this conclusion and, of those, some even show an increase in recidivism rates’.
29. NICRO works primarily with young people between the ages of 14 and 19. Of its total clientele, 63.36% are black, 27.77% are colored, 6.75% are white, and 2.12% are Asian (Dawson, Citation2009, p. 14).
30. It should be noted that there has been a notable increase in the overall use of diversion in South Africa from 14,808 cases in 2002–2003 to 46,469 cases in 2007–2008. This represents a growth of 213.8% (Presidency of the Republic of South Africa, Citation2009, p. 65).
31. According to the Act, ‘“child” means any person under the age of 18 years and, in certain circumstances, means a person who is 18 years or older but under the age of 21 …’ (Section 1).
32. A copy of the Child Justice Act is available at http://www.childjustice.org.za/downloads/A75-2008.pdf.
33. On this point, it is important to note that the Act raises the age of criminal capacity from 10 to 14.
34. The Act defines restorative justice as ‘… an approach to justice that aims to involve the child offender, the victim, the families concerned and community members to collectively identify and address harms, needs and obligations through accepting responsibility, making restitution, taking measures to prevent a recurrence of the incident and promoting reconciliation’ (Section 1).
35. According to Omeje (Citation2008, p. 89), ‘It is within the philosophical context of ubuntu and comparable practices in other parts of Africa that traditional African methods of conflict resolution are essentially situated’.
36. Informal conversation, Durban beachfront, 28 July 2010.
37. The author visited Mpophomeni township on 30 July 2010.