Exclusive societies: Towards a critical criminology of post-apartheid South Africa

This paper takes a recent book by British criminologist Jock Young on crime and social exclusion in late modernity as a starting point for the development of a critical criminology of post-apartheid South Africa. The first section of the article locates Young's work within the British tradition of critical criminology with which he has long been associated This is followed by a summary of the main arguments advanced in The Exclusive Society. In the second half of the paper these arguments are used to explore the nature and causes of crime in contemporary South Africa. It is suggested that the country's democratic transition can be characterised, following Young, as a shift from one form of exclusive society to another. The article ends with a plea for the work of theorists like Young to be used as the basis for a critical South African criminology capable of meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.