Acta Criminologica : African Journal of Criminology & Victimology - latest Issue

From the 27 to 30 August 2019, the Criminological Society of Africa (CRIMSA) hosted its biennial conference under the theme: “History and Future of Criminology in Africa and the Global South”. The conference theme was inspired by the need to chart a robust future for criminology by reflecting on what we have been doing and currently do in research, teaching, practice and engagement on a daily basis as scholars and experts in the Global South in general and on the continent of Africa in particular. However, despite being granted an opportunity to reflect on this theme, very few papers took this challenge. One wonders why this was the case.

From the literature there are strong indications of prolonged unethical conduct in the South African correctional system. A decision was thus taken to investigate this phenomenon by means of an ethics survey instrument to assess workplace perceptions and attitudes of South African correctional staff. Although the system is enormous, some homogeneity does occur. Nonetheless, the researchers could not include enough correctional centres to generalise the findings in this study to the whole system and understand the difficulty in devising a survey instrument that simultaneously and accurately reflects the knowledge/attitudes and the subsequent behaviour of correctional officials. For this research a Likert type questionnaire was used. Data was captured on Epi-info version 7 and exported to SPSS. Patterns and trends were established to compose four areas of perception, namely regulation, interaction, behaviour, and attitude. Hypothesis level was done at five percent level of significance. From the study it is evident that correctional officials’ perceptions of and insights into ethical conduct is strong, even though certain areas of perception show that staff may act differently to what their perceptions are. The article concludes that more research needs to be done to determine the causality between perceptions, attitudes, (two of the four areas of perception that have emanated from the questionnaire) and eventual conduct.

The study was conducted at Chikurubi Prison and in the Harare suburb, Mbare. The study was implemented after a realisation that some released prisoners continue to re-offend while communities continue to stigmatise ex-convicts long after imprisonment. The study sought to examine issues of recidivism and appropriateness of rehabilitation interventions in Zimbabwe. The Harper Doctrine was evaluated in terms of its applicability. A qualitative case study design and non-probability sampling techniques were used. The study used small samples, but its findings can provide some insights into issues of prisoners’ rehabilitation and recidivism in Zimbabwe. Overall, findings failed to approve or disprove the Harper Doctrine. Findings suggest that socio-economic factors, societal discrimination, stigmatisation of ex-convicts and underfunded and ineffective rehabilitation programmes contribute to re-offending. Recommendations proffered, if implemented, might lead to policy changes. Criminalisation of stigmatisation and discrimination of ex-convicts is a possibility, particularly in the field of formal employment. More open prisons (minimum security prisons for offenders considered not dangerous) can be established to help with prisoners’ rehabilitation prior to prison release and to facilitate for resilient community reintegration.

Diversion is one of the mechanisms of channelling the youth in conflict with the law away from the criminal justice system through reintegration programmes. Diversion is critical to the achievement of a child justice regime that is compliant with constitutional and international obligations. Despite some success in reducing crime among youth in conflict with the law by means of rehabilitating them through diversion programmes, an illumination of the perspectives and experiences of youth is limited in the literature. This article explores the impact of diversion programmes on a sample of ten youth offenders who had been referred to the Youth Empowerment Scheme Programme of the National Institute for Crime Prevention and Reintegration of Offenders (NICRO) in Durban. The article is based on a study that utilised a qualitative research methodology design and employed purposeful non-probability sampling involving youth who had participated on a diversion programme. The findings of this study demonstrated that youth pleaded guilty not because they were guilty, but in order to avoid being incarcerated. This finding implies that some youth plead guilty to a crime they had not committed due to the arrangements associated with pleading guilty, such as being diverted. It is then recommended that there is a need for further research to evaluate the preliminary inquiry process of diversion programmes in order to assess whether they are conducted in a manner that is just and non-discriminatory. It is further recommended that the Department of Justice should develop mechanisms that will ensure that the rights of these youth are protected during the preliminary inquiry of diversion programmes. Further research is needed to empirically assess how decisions are made during the process of diverting the youth and to establish factors that influence decision of the relevant officials.

Literature is awash with the secrecy surrounding prison, prison administration and prison records particularly during the dark years of apartheid. Invariably, corrections and penitentiaries all over the world are notorious for their secrecy and not overly open for public scrutiny. While this is the case, there is a need for a comprehensive approach to address the emerging psychosocial problems encountered by correctional officials. Even more so for correctional personnel who, during apartheid years, were responsible for the execution of inmates sentenced to death. Thus, although the history of capital punishment was studied in South Africa prior to the abolishment of capital punishment in 1995, there are no scientific studies done on its impact on correctional officials. There further is very little evidence to suggest that correctional personnel and, in particular, warders, who were involved in the executions, received any form of intervention from the State or the Department concerned. The central argument of this article is that there is a need for such interventions in the democratic dispensation as these correctional officers still exhibit signs of emotional and psychological trauma. While no interviews were conducted with death row correctional personnel, the anecdotes from archival data are relied upon to inform intervention strategies for these warders. Organisationally, the article is structured into four epochs. First an account of the extent of executions in apartheid South Africa is given. This is followed by a brief overview of the methods of executions. A third layer of the article focuses on the identities of the hangman or death row warders. The impact of executions of these correctional personnel is addressed in the fourth section. In the last section, a central argument is made for intervention programming for death row correctional warders who remain in the service within corrections.

No matter how well-crafted and well-intentioned anti-corruption normative frameworks are formulated, they all come down to nothing if, and when, anti-corruption institutions are tasked with implementing anti-corruption frameworks that are ineffective, or do not produce the expected positive results. This article draws some significant and comparative lessons from Hong Kong, Singapore and Botswana, focussing on their anti-corruption agencies, and their respective effectiveness in combatting corruption. Another important factor informing the choice of these countries is their Transparency International rankings. It is further acknowledged in this article that these types of anti-corruption agencies may differ according to the ambit of their functions. The independent anti-corruption agencies in Hong Kong, Singapore and Botswana have proved to be relatively successful and can provide valuable lessons for South African. Hong Kong, Singapore and Botswana have some common and interpretable patterns in combatting corruption. Importantly, their anti-corruption agencies owe their successes to political support, better resources, organisational autonomy and independence. These attributes, unfortunately, are lacking in the current South African anti-corruption machinery. What anti-corruption approach and model should South Africa adopt? This article argues for a single-agency model or a model that fuses the strong characteristics of a multi-agency with a single agency. Part 2 of this article deals with the anti-corruption frameworks of the selected countries used for comparative purposes. Part 3 and Part 4 deal with the lessons learnt from the three selected country jurisdictions.

The focus of this article is on the teachers’ views and experiences of learner-on-teacher school-based violence, and [the study] aimed at identifying the most common form of violence levelled against teachers. Learner-on-teacher school-based violence is a serious problem in South African schools. It appears to be on the rise and is not adequately reported or addressed. Using secondary data, this article reports on the victimisation of teachers by learners and aims to contribute to the limited body of knowledge on the prevalence of the phenomenon. Qualitative data were collected through individual one-on-one interviews and documentary analysis. Nine participants were purposefully selected from within the Johannesburg North [School] District. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse data. The findings established that verbal attacks were the most common form of violence directed against teachers, with learners being the prime perpetrators. Furthermore, it was found that most of the teachers were negatively affected by the violence directed towards them, with significant repercussions for their wellbeing.

Cyberattacks, via hacking, malware, spyware and ransomware infection, have become rife globally. Ransomware has, since 2013, become one of the most pernicious, destructive and prevalent of the many strains of malware used by cybercriminals. Strictly speaking, ransomware is malware (malicious software) using crimeware to hack into databases in order to ‘lock down’ database files so that the user (target victim) is unable to access the information files unless they pay a ransom. In other words, they are blackmailed to pay up by threats of either releasing the ‘captured’ information, selling it on the Darknet to the highest bidder or the cybercriminal ransomers using personal information to hack into users’ banking accounts to steal funds from those illegally accessed accounts. If a victim (individual or organisation/company) refuses to pay such ransom, the files are either permanently ‘locked’ or ‘infected’ with a malware computer virus and become corrupted in their entirety, thus rendering future operations of the company or individual target difficult or virtually impossible. Standard ransomware was a form of malware with a more direct attack vector than, for instance, web-malware, and is a more-stealthy form of the older email phishing infection vehicle. The first recorded ransomware occurred in 1989. Later, more sophisticated versions of ransomware (after the entry of more professional cybercriminals) using encryption, appeared in 2006. But, this too, became more advanced with ransomers asking for greater sums of money. This ransomware, using ever-more complex encryption formats, became known as crypto-ransomware, and is a more recent and dangerous cybercriminal development. As more of what we do goes online, the current ransomware schemes have become more successful. New schemes are constantly being dreamed up by cybercriminals who quickly realised that people are willing to pay hundreds, if not thousands, in ransom (usually using the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as the medium for payment) to have their ‘stolen’ (‘locked’) information released.

Deaths in police custody remains controversial given the perceptions of heavy-handed behaviour of police personnel. Yet, a death in police custody can occur for several reasons including natural causes, suicide, accident or indeed brutality preceding custody or during custody. The brutality could emanate from police personnel themselves or the public in the case of community vigilantism. Although the treatment of individuals in police custody is subject to scrutiny, this remains a poorly defined and poorly researched area of Forensic Pathology. Against the preceding arguments the purpose of this descriptive study therefore was to describe and understand circumstances around deaths in police custody as observed at the Gale Street Mortuary in Durban, South Africa, between 2004 and 2014. All deaths that occurred in police custody during this 11-year period on which autopsies had been performed at Gale Street Mortuary were included in the study. Data was collected retrospectively from these post-mortem reports and files with demographical data, circumstances and cause of death. Specific circumstances identified may indicate risk factors for later development of preventative measures. This may further result in the provision of resources for future research, legislation and adoption of preventative strategies both locally and internationally.

Livestock theft should be controlled successfully in order to sustain the South African livestock industry. The aim of the study was to estimate the financial impact of and to identify factors affecting sheep and goat theft in the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa. Primary data was collected from 228 livestock farmers and Probit, Tobit and Truncated models were used to analyse the data. Results found that the direct cost of livestock theft amount to R 44 744 000 (US$ 3 359 159) in annual losses. Livestock guards were widely used and many of the guards were armed. The use of other measures against stock theft also seemed to be on the rise in reaction to sheep and goat theft in the KwaZulu-Natal Province. Regular counting of sheep and goats is recommended to farmers in KwaZulu-Natal, which action was linked to lower levels of goat theft. The study also recommends that there should be co-ordination and collaboration among all key role players in the industry. All role players’ target should be to eradicate or reduce stock theft and enhance controlling mechanisms in order to sustain food security, livestock competitiveness and achieve sustainable development.

In South Africa income tax is unavoidable, since all are liable to pay taxes. Electronic-Filing (e-filing) was first instituted in 2001 and expanded in 2006. However, the institution of e-filing created opportunities for the commission of income tax fraud. Tax fraud is defined, among other criminal acts, as when a taxpayer misappropriates tax deducted from other payments made to a creditor, such as a non-resident withholding tax or Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE), or where a person knowingly provides false or incomplete returns intending thereby to evade both the assessment and payment of tax. In other words, tax fraud occurs when taxpayers do not pay their taxes or find illegal ways to avoid paying outstanding taxes. Tax fraud, therefore, being one of the factors impeding tax revenue collection in South Africa. Accordingly, tax fraud is detrimental to the overall fiscus impeding the rendering of adequate services to the public and results in poor service delivery. Tax fraud often leads to the existence of a shadow economy in which people do not reveal the real and taxable income that they have earned through legal activities including barter and monetary activities, in order to avoid tax obligations, i.e. paying annual tax on any income earned. This article argues that tax is a vital ingredient in ensuring that South Africa remains economically healthy for generations to come. This article suggests that syndicates that defraud South African Revenue Services (SARS) use electronic-filing (e-filing) as a predominant method of tax avoidance which system seems to allow defrauders to falsify the information that is provided by the applicant, and it appears that such taxpayers collude with tax consultants, personnel attached to South African Revenue Services and other knowledgeable private individuals. Recommendations offered are that the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) Directorate of Priority Crimes Investigations (DPCI) should call for the improvement of SARS e-filing system in order to detect falsified information by tracing the history of applicants. Investigators should closely look at current trends to improve present investigation techniques. SARS should also implement internal investigations (of staff) to monitor the claims made before tax returns are paid out.