This is a long posting. Not typical Blog material. But it’s best said in one piece rather than as a series of articles. So here goes…
A legitimate criticism levelled at most of us who whinge about crime is that we don’t propose solutions. That’s a fair crit. So after some thought, here’s my provisional background thinking and a few ideas that might help kickstart such a process.
Anthropologists and those steeped in
historical African culture, like the late Dr. Ntate Kgalushi Koka 
This constituted Ubuntu or African Humanism at its very best. The crime was hated, but not the person.
The tragedy today is that only tenuous vestiges of Ubuntu remain in African culture and largely in the rural community at that. But I’m optimistic that in generational theory terms, the wheel will turn and young people of all persuasions may one day go back to these sterling values. To a place where the needs of the community and others will find a complementary fit with their own. It’s only when the greater need of society or others can (where appropriate) be put ahead of our own that we put a foot on the first rung of the ladder of humanism.
In the ‘old days’ of African culture, a sentence considered appropriate was meted out to the offender, but that sentence inevitably involved serving society in some or other way to make amends for the transgression. It may even have involved serving the family of or the actual person affected by the crime. The idea of keeping the individual within the community – albeit under ‘supervision’ of some sort – was so that they weren’t alienated from the community or social progress. So there was a parallel intervention taking place. 1) They were working out their debt to society – inside of that society and 2) they were undergoing consistent and sustainable rehabilitation at the same time. That this concept has not been embraced and applied in a more modern context is our loss.
Apartheid has left many black people in particular with the mindset that reporting perpetrators of crime, or being a law-enforcement ‘informer’ in even the most constructive sense of the word, means being an ‘impimpi’ – which is about the worst thing you could be in the Apartheid days of ‘them and us’. Yet without complete community involvement and a collective zero tolerance for crime - but not in the kangaroo court or ‘citizen justice/vigilante’ sense - we’ll never achieve normalisation in our society.
What’s needed is, among many other approaches:
a) Adopting an aggressive hearts and minds program in which we position civilian co-operation, involvement and participation with the justice system and law-enforcement authorities as loyalty, patriotism and nationalism which rises above perceived or actual ethnic and cultural divides.
b) It’s not a problem using modern high-tech mechanisms, to have someone in society, but under restraint. There are leg-worn monitoring devices which can be tracked in real time and even programmed to sound an alarm on site and also remotely, if the wearer attempts to mutilate, destroy or remove it.
c) We need a ‘Small Claims Court’ version in the management of crime. Appropriately qualified commissioners can mete out swift and appropriate community-involved justice to ‘perps’ of crimes up to a certain level. That would unblock the pending-trial, waiting-for-bail applications plumbing problem and divert large numbers of people into community-serving processes rather than into prisons. This becomes particularly important with young people. So they’re not held, awaiting trial, with older, hardened criminals who are likely to negatively influence them even further. There are also enormous sexual abuse risks involved in mixing youth and older criminal populations. A prison rape today will very likely be an ARV or death sentence given escalating HIV infection rates.
d) There’s a huge disparity in sentences meted out for a range of offences. This is something that could be codified and standardised within certain parameters so we don’t have someone stealing a chicken and waiting three years for the case to come to trial and then being sentenced to five years in total. Contrast this with someone guilty of culpable homicide getting a suspended sentence. Inequality of note. Such an approach would also eliminate people sitting in prisons because they can’t afford paltry sums of bail money. Our focus needs to be on doing the best for society by returning to it a useful, rehabilitated and contributing member. Not some dysfunctional individual, who will almost certainly commit further crimes, sometimes simply to get back to the ‘security’ and familiarity of the prison or gang world.
e) There is a critical skills shortage in ‘artisan’ territory throughout the country. The old ‘apprenticeship’ schemes should be revitalised and used to train people working out community sentences so that they’re learning and contributing as they do so, but more importantly, at the end of their sentence, they’re qualified to do something consecutive with their lives. Industry and commerce need to be co-opted as participants in this process so that former offenders don’t run into an unemployment brick wall due to their past.
f) We need a very aggressive and
proactive youth diversion program. The thrust of any crime prevention strategy
needs to be aimed first and foremost at reducing the ‘recruits’ that are
attracted to it. Diversion programs ensure that youth offenders don’t get
sucked into the mainstream world of crime and punishment. Many of the young
people caught up in the crime web come from desperately dysfunctional, unhappy
and unsupportive homes. What they need is life skills coaching and borders or
parameters within which they can safely operate and live. Ellen Sirleaf
Johnson, the current president of Liberia
says that the single biggest challenge facing Liberia right now is inculcating a sense of discipline and social responsibility into a generation of young people dislocated by war and traumatising violence.
In South Africa, many of our present 25 and upward young people still bear scars and the burden of our unbalanced past.
g) There’s a reality TV series entitled ‘Redemption Hill’. Based in New Zealand, its taken some really hard-core, seemingly ‘beyond redemption’ young people and put them into a mock prison system with warders (in fact highly-skilled social workers in disguise) as a last-ditch attempt to get them back on the proverbial straight’n narrow. It’s made for fascinating viewing as one sees the progressive transformation of these young folk. It’s a process that can be successful if there are the resources and the will behind it. As former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan once said of African genocide prevention or intervention, ‘We have the means to stop it, but not the will.’ We need to bear that in mind as we cope with crime in our country.
h) Recidivism is the word used to describe the return-to-crime of prisoners after release. The recidivism rate in one prison I visited in my freelance days on Radio 702, was something of the order of 90%. Meaning that only 10% of the people released didn’t get trapped in the cycle of imprisonment, release and re-imprisonment. That tells us that the current system doesn’t work at all and that there’s no rehab of any sustainable sort taking place.
The idea of keeping people (other than the really ‘un-rehabilitatable’ or extremely dangerous) offenders in society, under supervision, monitoring, management and mentorship, is the only course of action left to us.
In summary: 1) Introduce ‘small claims courts’ equivalents for crime. 2) Engage civil society in the employment, skills-transfer and rehab process – using high-tech monitoring and supervision devices. 3) Protect our youth offenders from the mainstream hard-core criminal element while we re-direct their energies and talents. 4) Reduce recidivism by giving offenders solid skills training while they’re working out their debt to society. 5) Have society embrace these people and employ them at the end of their ‘time’. 6) Have a council of interested and concerned citizens and subsets throughout the country, to constantly brainstorm innovative approaches to the problem. Heck, I’d be delighted to play a tiny role in such a future-altering initiative. As would numerous other South African business people.
Let’s get together a council of wise people to explore how this and other concepts can be successfully implemented and then roll out the model regionally. Just as the world is waking up the fact that we’ll leave a devastated environment to our youth if we don’t act – so we’ll leave a chaotic global and local social structure to succeeding generations if we don’t all act on crime.
Practical, manageable and measurable ideas Clive. Thanks. Now how do we step your thoughts to the next level? Send it to the minister? I think not. This is where the challenge lies for me. Getting the powers that be to listen to balanced reason, and implement solutions one step at a time...
Posted by: Mike | Thursday, 08 March 2007 at 11:52
Mike, I think the route to go is via the Business Leadership South Africa's http://www.businessleadership.org.za/ CEO, Michael Spicer, an FNB of the world etc. i.e. make it a civilian collaboration with govt. Driven by the business skills of the civilian component. Wot say?
Posted by: Clive Simpkins | Thursday, 08 March 2007 at 12:26