Social Crime Prevention in South Africa’s Major Cities, Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation http://www.csvr.org.za/papers/papalm2.htm Accessed 19

This report will examine social crime prevention activities in South Africa's four major cities during 2000, and locate these activities within an analysis of the progress that has been made in terms of the social crime prevention approach suggested for cities in the 1998 White Paper on Safety and Security. 1. Punishment or Prevention: International Trends After the Second World War, the international trend in crime prevention was to address crime through the criminal justice system, which typically included a combination of vigorous policing, and a 'tough ' justice system. This was based on an individualistic approach to crime prevention, which assumed that individual motivation plays an important role in the decision to commit a crime (Travis and Weisburd, 1997). Crime was seen to be a product of particular individuals, and the model of what kind of individual committed crime was largely deduced from those that were incarcerated (Robert, 1989). Given that crime was seen as a problem of particular individuals, who lacked moral integrity, the envisaged solution was to ensure that such people were incarcerated for as long as possible, to protect society from those who did adhere to social norms (Garland 1996)