Transformation and Trouble: Crime, Justice, and Participation in Democratic South Africa. By Diana Gordon

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 the most pressing issues facing a democratic South Africa-a high and seemingly uncontrollable level of crime. As Gordon demonstrates, the post-apartheid crime wave is closely tied to South Africa's democratic transition and the legacies of apartheid-socioeconomic and criminological. Her book ably presents the histories of pre-apartheid and apartheid "justice" and traces the "bitter fruits" this history has bequeathed the new South Africa (pp. 83-110). At the same time, Gordon does not simply blame the structural violence of apartheid. Rather, the book recognizes the challenges facing the democratic government while explaining and critiquing many of the policy choices that have been made in repeated attempts to reduce the crime rate in the time since South Africa's first democratic election. While generally critical of the government's efforts, particularly in its failure to embrace the opportunities of public participation and accountability inherent in community policing, Gordon also highlights the enormous changes that have taken place. First, the police have been transformed from a paramilitary organization whose main purpose was to defend the apartheid state into a more professional organization whose behavior has changed dramatically even if some of the 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 the role the police must play in protecting the public, including those who are exercising their constitutional rights to assemble and demonstrate, rather than merely defending the political order of the day (pp. 146-7). At the same time, Gordon questions the emphasis on a depoliticized professionalization, arguing that the liberal promise of the new constitution will only be achieved through a repoliticization that highlights the role of the police in the protection of rights. One of the most important contributions Gordon makes is her use of a comparative perspective to reflect on the attempts to introduce what she terms "public-empowering justice" into South Africa's democratic transition. The idea of public-empowered justice reflects an engagement between the 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 the South African experience, Gordon demonstrates the continuing tension between various efforts to promote "citizen participation in public ordering" (p. 214) and the reluctance of the new government to provide adequate resources to ensure that these new mechanisms are not merely co-opted by the police, a problem that she argues is exacerbated by the degree of central control that the new government has continued to assert in the fields of criminal law and justice. Although Gordon recognizes that addressing the broader problems of crime in South Africa will not be simply a matter of enhanced policing capacity or local control, she offers a stinging critique of the new government's embrace of the "tough on crime" politics that has come hand in glove with a neoliberal market orientation in government policies. …