Julie Berg

Violence, violence prevention, and safety: A research agenda for South Africa

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.

Private policing in South Africa: The Cape Town city improvement district — pluralisation in practice

Abstract Changes related to postmodern trends outline, briefly, the way policing is being re-considered in South Africa. Testimony to this is the Cape Town City Improvement District Initiative which is represented as a case study of the nature of pluralised policing in contemporary South African communities. The types and amount of policing being undertaken and the relations between various policing entities is discussed as well as the implications of these types of networks in terms of various ideological and practical issues.

Seeing like private security: Evolving mentalities of public space protection in South Africa

This article will illustrate, by means of three empirical research examples conducted in South Africa, that private security operating in public spaces simultaneously retains ‘traditional’ private security mentalities of loss prevention as well as ‘traditional’ state policing mentalities of crime control and coercion. This adoption of either state or corporate mentalities and technologies is fluid, interchangeable and by no means mutually exclusive, befitting the nature of daily security activities as well as the expectations generated from policing that space. In this way, private security is evolving in its application of diverse policing mentalities in its management and interpretation of public ‘space’; in its ability to wield power both symbolically and actually and; in its tendency to adopt a variety of crime control and social ordering techniques.

Challenges to a formal private security industry-SAPS partnership: Lessons from the Western Cape

Abstract The following paper attempts to gauge the possible future of policing in South Africa by assessing the nature of the relationship between the South African Police Service (SAPS) and private security companies operating in the Western Cape. An investigation was conducted whereby the current concerns within the private security industry were assessed in relation to the developing relations with the SAPS. In so doing it was found that, despite the fact that there exists an informal co-operative relationship with the public police, there may be a number of inherent problems within the private security industry hampering the creation of a formal relationship with the SAPS in the Western Cape. These inherent problems include, for example, the fact that the industry is highly competitive and consumer-orientated (not necessarily community-orientated). Also that the industry has a stigma attached to it and demonstrates a bureaucratic nature despite being run on business principles, and the accountability of the industry is also called into question. It is therefore in view of these developing public-private relations and obstacles thereto that one can possibly predict the future role of private security in the policing of society in South Africa.

Typologies of partnership policing: case studies from urban South Africa

In the contemporary pluralised landscape of policing, partnerships between public and private policing bodies are often the norm, rather than the exception. This is particularly the case for South Africa, where partnering between the state police and private security industry has a long history. Through focusing on different types of partnerships between the state police and the private security industry in urban South Africa, this article shows that the generally applied ‘junior-partner’ model does not reflect the complexity and diversity of public–private policing partnerships. Through an analysis of unstructured and structured interactions between private security officers and police officers in different operational settings in three South African cities (Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban), this article shows how various forms of partnering – ranging from competitive and collaborative – simultaneously take place due to a range of different factors, such as the nature of information-sharing, personal perceptions and networks. This article thereby emphasises the diversity of partnering in contemporary urban South Africa that often maintains and challenges the ‘junior-partner’ model.

Civilian oversight of police in South Africa: from the ICD to the IPID

South Africa’s transition to a democracy brought with it a holistic accountability system geared toward aligning the South African Police with democratic principles. This article focuses on one component of this accountability system – the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) and its recent successor, the Independent Police Investigative Directive (IPID). It aims to critically review the mandate and operations of the ICD; reflect on the shift from the ICD to the IPID; and discuss the IPID’s mandate in light of past difficulties. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical implications of this shift and current challenges of police oversight.

Governing-through-Harm and Public Goods Policing

Among scholars of law and crime and practitioners of public safety, there is a pervasive view that only the public police can or should protect the public interest. Further, the prevailing perception is that the public police predominantly governs through crime—that is, acts on harms as detrimental to the public good. We argue that governing harm through crime is not always the most effective way of producing public safety and security and that the production of public safety is not limited to public police forces. An approach of governing-through-harm that uses a variety of noncrime strategies and private security agents as participants in public safety is often more effective—and more legitimate—than the predominant governing-through-crime approach. We reflect on case studies of noncrime intervention strategies from the Global South to bolster the case for decoupling the link between the public police and public goods. A new theoretical framing needs to be pursued.