Diana R. Gordon

Democratic consolidation and community policing: Conflicting imperatives in South Africa

Community policing is currently seen as essential to public policing in a democracy. Yet the consolidation of a new democracy poses potentially conflicting demands that may defeat efforts to move in this direction. The study reported here examines the rise and decline of Community Police Forums in South Africa, a high‐priority effort to democratize the state police during the 1994–1999 transition from apartheid to democracy. The South African experience of building a durable democracy suggests that once the legitimacy of the new government has been established the imperative of regime performance carries more weight than the need to deepen democracy, and that the high crime levels that often accompany greater political freedom are likely to determine a definition of police effectiveness antithetical to community policing. The author notes the irony that the democratization process set in motion political and social forces that increased the political utility of demonstrating the states authority through policing policy.

Deepening democracy through community dispute resolution: problems and prospects in South Africa and Chile

Post-apartheid South Africa and post-Pinochet Chile have taken significant steps to democratize justice. This article acknowledges conventional reforms of both countries’ criminal justice systems but focuses primarily on case studies of participatory and restorative initiatives that have attempted to expand the theory and practice of public safety practices in non-state settings. The experience of resolving interpersonal disputes in new democracies and what it means for the people who do it is examined. The research hypothesized that public participation in matters of justice and security can foster more active citizenship, a contribution to deepening democracy in countries in transition, as South Africa and Chile have been since the early 1990s. The experiences of the Community Peace Program and the Barrio Sin Violencia shed light on both the potential and the limitations of efforts to deepen democracy through community dispute resolution. They suggest that whether or not public participation in matters of justice and security fosters more active citizenship in democratizing countries depends on complex cultural and historical influences, including perspectives on sources of authority, institutional patterns of justice, and mutual trust.

The American Way of Crime Control@@@The Justice Juggernaut: Fighting Street Crime, Controlling Citizens.

Discusses the effectiveness of new get tough criminal justice policies and argues that the increasing role of surveillance is endangering both democracy and the right to privacy.