Penology

In looking at the nature of crime, convictions and remedies it is clear that white and black in South Africa were subject to different kinds of social control, and criminalised as a result of different, but interlocking, agenda. Large numbers of Africans were criminally punished for breaches of the laws of labour discipline and mobilisation, the tax, pass, and masters and servants laws. Large numbers of whites were criminalised by the liquor laws (which of course also affected Africans), and other measures aimed at imposing on them the disciplines of the new segregating society. Most criminal offenders in all racial groups were manufactured by the intensified drive to create a segregated society supported by black labour. The discourses of criminology and penology, which were derived from, and sustained from, outside the country, had to be used to apply, explain and control these local and particular patterns of criminalisation. So too did the discourses and methods of the equally exotic criminal law. Both also had to be rehearsed against a background of the threat to white rule perceived and feared by the state.

The development of a body of criminological thought which stressed the inherent and determined differences between the criminal and others also had important implications for penology. The idea that free will was a delusion undermined the belief in the reformative aspects of imprisonment. This was connected to a fascination with recidivism.