Transformation and Trouble: Crime, Justice, and Participation in Democratic South Africa. By Diana Gordon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Pp. 400. $75.00 cloth; $27.95 paper.

Abstract

Transformation and Trouble: Crime, Justice, and Participation in Democratic South Africa. By Diana Gordon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Pp. 400. $75.00 cloth; $27.95 paper. Reviewed by Heinz Klug, University of Wisconsin Diana Gordon's book is an extraordinary treatment of one of most pressing issues facing a democratic South Africa-a high and seemingly uncontrollable level of crime. As Gordon demonstrates, post-apartheid wave is closely tied to South Africa's democratic transition and legacies of apartheid-socioeconomic and criminological. Her book ably presents histories of pre-apartheid and apartheid and traces bitter fruits this history has bequeathed new South Africa (pp. 83-110). At same time, Gordon does not simply blame structural violence of apartheid. Rather, book recognizes challenges facing democratic government while explaining and critiquing many of choices that have been made in repeated attempts to reduce rate in time since South Africa's first democratic election. While generally critical of government's efforts, particularly in its failure to embrace opportunities of public participation and accountability inherent in community policing, Gordon also highlights enormous changes that have taken place. First, police have been transformed from a paramilitary organization whose main purpose was to defend apartheid state into a more professional organization whose behavior has changed dramatically even if some of old ways of thinking about police work have been slow to change (pp. 140-8). Second, public order policing has, as a result of both policy change and professional leadership, been reoriented toward an understanding of role police must play in protecting public, including those who are exercising their constitutional rights to assemble and demonstrate, rather than merely defending political order of day (pp. 146-7). At same time, Gordon questions emphasis on a depoliticized professionalization, arguing that liberal promise of new constitution will only be achieved through a repoliticization that highlights role of police in protection of rights. One of most important contributions Gordon makes is her use of a comparative perspective to reflect on attempts to introduce what she terms public-empowering into South Africa's democratic transition. The idea of public-empowered justice reflects an engagement between public and official institutions that ties advocacy and service provision in a way that both empowers public participation and transforms the roles of criminal justice operatives to a community orientation(p. 196). Turning to South African experience, Gordon demonstrates continuing tension between various efforts to promote citizen participation in public ordering (p. 214) and reluctance of new government to provide adequate resources to ensure that these new mechanisms are not merely co-opted by police, a problem that she argues is exacerbated by degree of central control that new government has continued to assert in fields of criminal law and justice. Although Gordon recognizes that addressing broader problems of in South Africa will not be simply a matter of enhanced policing capacity or local control, she offers a stinging critique of new government's embrace of tough on crime politics that has come hand in glove with a neoliberal market orientation in government policies. …