Policing the Transition: Transforming the Police

• NCJ Number: 152356
• Author(s): F Haysom
• Date Published: Unknown
• Length: 15 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: African National Congress
• Sale Source: African National Congress
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: South Africa

Annotation

This analysis of policing in South Africa examines the current crisis in policing; frames a new vision of policing; proposes measures to transform the police, including the structure of a new police force; and suggests attitudes and approaches to the police in the interim.

Abstract

The crisis in policing is manifest in the failure of the police to deliver even a minimum level of public safety and security. It is caused by a variety of internal and external problems that neither the police nor the National Party can resolve. If the police are to adapt to the role that they are now required to play, the internal structure and the cop culture which it informs must be changed in accordance with a new vision of policing. The descriptive terms used to profile the new vision of policing are democratic, accountable, visible, proactive, representative, transparent, professional, impartial, and service. Measures proposed to transform the police are demilitarization, affirmative action, independent monitoring, accountability, training, recruitment and promotion, rationalization of organization, community empowerment, and the use of force and public order policing. This report argues that the only framework that would ensure an effective, competent, and accountable police force would be a single national police force, which is obliged by law to subject itself to national, regional, and local mechanisms of accountability and evaluation/control.