‘Violence, Violence Prevention, and Safety: A Research Agenda for South Africa’

Abstract: Violence is a serious problem in South Africa with many effects on health services; it presents complex research problems and requires interdisciplinary collaboration. Two key meta-questions emerge: (i) violence must be understood better to develop effective interventions; and (ii) intervention research (evaluating interventions, assessing efficacy and effectiveness, how best to scale up interventions in resource-poor settings) is necessary. A research agenda to address violence is proposed.

Full Citation: Ward C et al.  (2012) Violence, Violence Prevention and Safety: A Research Agenda for South Africa. South African Medical Journal, 102 (4): 215-218. ( Available for download with subscription at: http://www.samj.org.za/index.php/samj/article/view/5544/4001).

 

The Spreading of the City Improvement District Model in Johannesburg and Cape Town: Urban Regeneration and the Neoliberal Agenda in South Africa.

Abstract. The spreading of city improvement districts (CIDs) and connected forms of public–private partnership as an international model of urban renewal has been linked to the rise of ‘urban entrepreneurialism’ and the neoliberalization of policies and practices, at a time when competition between cities in the global economy has never been greater. The aim of this article is to explore the transfer and adaptation of the CID model in two cities of the South, Johannesburg and Cape Town. Arguing that CIDs are an example of the local embeddedness of neoliberalism, we highlight the role of the private sector in importing and adapting CIDs in South Africa, and point out the rise of techno-politicians in CID management. Paying particular attention to discourses, we analyse the way images of decaying urban centres were used to legitimate the adoption of such schemes. The subsequent transformation of the model also enables us to explore the specificity of the adoption of this international best practice model in South Africa and its further circulation at the Southern African level. We conclude that while CIDs in South Africa raise familiar North American issues regarding the private management of public spaces, they also question the very nature of the African city model proposed and envisioned locally.

Full citation:  Didier, S., Peyroux, E., Morange, M. (2012) The Spreading of the City Improvement District Model in Johannesburg and Cape Town: Urban Regeneration and the Neoliberal Agenda in South Africa.  International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Full text available with subscription. 

For Full article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01136.x/full

 

 

Informal security nodes and force capital.

Abstract: Nodal governance theory continues to have a significant impact upon contemporary understandings of the governance of security. Scholars such as Clifford Shearing and Benoit Dupont have used this theory to explain how various state and private sector security organisations interact and form networks of protection. However, security producing entities from the informal sector remain largely undefined. The purpose of this article is to address this theoretical gap and explore how informal security nodes (ISNs) operate in areas, and amongst populations, that are inadequately serviced by other, more formal security structures. Further developing the Bourdieuian metaphor of capital, this article will also introduce the concept of force capital and seek to explain its utility with regard to the operation of security nodes. Finally, a case study of ISN interaction in the South African informal settlement of Zandspruit will be presented and discussed with relevance to these novel theoretical developments

Full citation: Martin, James. 2012. Informal Security Nodes and Force Capital. Policing and Society 22 (1). Available with subscription.

For Full text: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10439463.2012.671821#preview

‘Cleaning up the ’hood: Focusing on drug markets rather than users means less crime’

The Economist, 3 March 2012

Police watched seven people sell drugs in Marshall Courts and Seven Oaks, two districts in south-eastern Newport News, in Virginia. They built strong cases against them. They shared that information with prosecutors. But then the police did something unusual: they sent the seven letters inviting them to police headquarters for a talk, promising that if they came they would not be arrested. Three came, and when they did they met not only police and prosecutors, but also family members, people from their communities, pastors from local churches and representatives from social-service agencies. Their neighbours and relatives told them that dealing drugs was hurting their families and communities. The police showed them the information they had gathered, and they offered the seven a choice: deal again, and we will prosecute you. Stop, and these people will help you turn your lives around.

This approach is known as drug-market intervention (DMI). It was first used in High Point, North Carolina, in 2004 and since then has been tried in more than 30 cities and counties. It is the brainchild of David Kennedy, a criminologist at John Jay College in New York, who thinks that “the most troubled communities can survive the public-health and family issues that come with even the highest levels of addiction. They can’t survive the community impact that comes with overt drug markets”—by which he means markets that draw outsiders to the neighbourhood. Once these are entrenched, a range of problems follow: not just drug use and sales, but open prostitution, muggings, robberies, declining property values, and the loss of businesses and safe public spaces.

‘Holding Police Accountability Theory to Account’

Abstract: Civilian oversight of police has and continues to be the focus of heated debate, in terms of its efficacy in tackling police misconduct. In recent decades, the debate has broadened as some researchers have argued in favour of a ‘holistic’ approachto police oversight. The latter combines the traditional ‘reactive’ functions (i.e. tacking cases of individual misconduct) with ‘proactive’ functions designed to promote organizational changes that might reduce individual misconduct. Advocates believe that policy review and change—the preferred proactive function—can achieve police reform. This article explores the available research into the efficacy of holistic oversight in the literature, particularly in relation to the political factors that influence its success or failure. It also reviews evidence from the Police Inspectorate of Kosovo—a recent example of holistic oversight—and the relevance of certain political factors that influence its ability to achieve police reform.

Full Citation: Harris, F. (2012). Holding Police Accountability Theory to Account. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, doi: 10.1093 (Available for download with subscription:    http://policing.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/03/11/police.pas003.abstract)

‘Olympics 2012 Security: Welcome to Lockdown London’

The Guardian, 12 March 2012 

London 2012 will see the UK’s biggest mobilisation of military and security forces since the second world war and the effects will linger long after the athletes have left. Around 13,500 troops will be deployed at the London 2012 Olympics, more than are ­currently at war in Afghanistan. With the required numbers of security staff more than doubling in the last year, estimates of the Games’ immediate security costs have doubled from £282m to £553m. Even these figures are likely to end up as dramatic underestimates: the final security budget of the 2004 Athens Olympics were around £1bn.

All this in a city convulsed by massive welfare, housing benefit and legal aid cuts, spiralling unemployment and rising social protests. It is darkly ironic, indeed, that large swaths of London and the UK are being thrown into ever deeper insecurity while being asked to pay for a massive security operation, of unprecedented scale, largely to protect wealthy and powerful people and corporations.

‘The State of the Nation, Government Priorities and Women in South Africa’

Government’s priorities affect all South Africans, the majority of whom are women and girls. Particularly black women and girls suffer multiple forms of discrimination and are among the most socioeconomically disadvantaged groups in South Africa.

This review gauges how the priorities set for 2012 will affect the social and economic status of women, and measures the advances made with regards to the five priorities set in SONA 2009, namely:

(1) Decent work

(2) Education

(3) Crime

(4) Health

(5) Rural development and agrarian reform

‘Respect in Prisons: Prisoners’ Experiences of Respect in Public and Private Sector Prisons’

Abstract: Interpretations of ‘respect’ in prison have tended to be narrow, focusing on courteous and considerate staff–prisoner relationships. In a recent study, we found that respect was defined by prisoners not just in terms of interpersonal relationships but also ‘getting things done’ (what might be called ‘organizational respect’). We expected prisoners in the study, which compared quality of life in public and private sector prisons, to rate private prisons well in terms of respect, due to previous research findings and the history and self-declared values of the companies who run them. The findings from the study revealed a more complex picture. There was mixed support for previous claims that the private sector offers a more courteous prison environment than the public sector, and, among the matched prisons in our study, the public sector establishments were better than the private sector prisons at ‘getting things done’: a distinct component of respect in prison, according to prisoners. These differences influenced prisoners’ evaluations of the ‘respectfulness’ of their treatment in each sector.

Full Citation: Hulley, S., Liebling, A. and Crewe, B. (2011). Respect in prisons: Prisoners’ experiences of respect in public and private sector prisons. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 12 (1): 3-23 (Available for download with subscription at: http://crj.sagepub.com/content/12/1/3.abstract?rss=1)

‘Morality, Markets, and the ASC: 2011 Presidential Adress to American Society of Criminology’

Abstract:  This Presidential Address explores the possibilities for fruitful multilevel theorizing in criminology by proposing an integration of insights from situational action theory (SAT), a distinctively micro-level perspective, with insights from institutional anomie theory (IAT), a distinctively macro-level perspective. These perspectives are strategic candidates for integration because morality plays a central role in both. IAT can enrich SAT by identifying indirect causes of crime that operate at the institutional level and by highlighting the impact of the institutional context on the perception-choice process that underlies crime. Such multilevel theorizing can also promote the development of IAT by revealing the “micro-instantiations” of macro-level processes and by simulating further inquiry into the social preconditions for institutional configurations that are conducive to low levels of crime. Finally, drawing on Durkheim’s classic work on occupational associations, I point to the potential role of professional associations such as the American Society of Criminology in promoting and sustaining a viable moral order in the advanced capitalist societies.

Full Citation: Messner, S. F. (2012). Morality, Markets, and the ASC: 2011 Presidential Adress to American Society of Criminology. Criminology, 50 (1): 5-25 (Available for download with subscription at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2011.00264.x/abstract). 

Book Review: ‘Women and security governance in Africa’

Abstract: With its huge population of 150 million, more than half of whom live in cities where material deprivation, political violence and pervasive corruption feed resentments; a citizenry fragmented among more than 250 ethnic  and/or religious minorities; and a history of 10 military coups since independence; it is hardly surprising that the problem of political instability, even the question of whether Nigeria can actually survive as a nation-state, is seldom absent from current discourse. Such is the level of interest in the problem that we turn expectantly to E.C. Ejiogu’s The Roots of Political Instability in Nigeria not least because the author claims in the Preface that the book makes a ‘unique’ contribution.

Full Citation: Baker, B. (2012). Women and security governance in Africa: Book Review. Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 50 (1): 142-144 (Available for download with subscription at: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fccp20/current).