HOW WE GOT IT WRONG: What to do about the failure of crime prevention

After 1994, South Africa committed itself to a vision of criminal justice that placed the prevention of crime at the centre of the strategic vision of the criminal justice system. The roots of this decision lie in the politics, organisational dynamics and intellectual climate of criminology in the mid-1990s. The model has, however, proved disappointing. Worse, by distracting government from the challenge of building a criminal justice system that identifies and incarcerates more violent criminals, it may actually have helped to foster the high levels of crime from which South Africa suffers.