Governing Through Crime in South Africa ― The Politics of Race and Class in Neoliberalizing Regimes

This book deals with the historic transition to democracy in South Africa and its impact upon crime and punishment. It examines how the problem of crime has emerged as a major issue to be governed in post-apartheid South Africa. Having undergone a dramatic transition from authoritarianism to democracy, from a white minority to black majority government, South Africa provides rich material on the role that political authority, and challenges to it, play in the construction of crime and criminality. As such, the study is about the socio-cultural and political significance of crime and punishment in the context of a change of regime. The work uses the South African case study to examine a question of wider interest, namely the politics of punishment and race in neoliberalizing regimes. It provides interesting and illuminating empirical material to the broader debate on crime control in post-welfare/neoliberalizing/post transition polities.

Gail Super is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Criminology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. She has a PhD in Law and Society from New York University, where she worked with David Garland, an MSc in Criminology from the London School of Economics, where she worked with the late Stan Cohen, and a law degree from the University of Cape Town. Before embarking on postgraduate studies Gail practiced as a human rights lawyer at the Legal Assistance Centre in Namibia and as an international human rights consultant, with a focus on children in trouble with the law. It was under her stewardship that the Legal Assistance Centre was awarded the UNICEF Maurice Pate award for innovation in the field of children’s rights. She has had articles published in leading international journals such as the British Journal of Criminology and Theoretical Criminology.