High levels of crime lead to death, loss and destruction, feelings of despair and insecurity, emigration and the loss of badly needed skills, vigilantism and a loss of trust in the institutions of government and the constitution. Therefore, criminal justice systems have to be capable of combating, preventing and reducing crime in order to establish a free, prosperous and peaceful society. What can be done to strengthen the criminal justice system? What is the role of the private sector in this task?
The South African Integrated Justice System (IJS) Initiative offers a series of lessons in this regard. The IJS was developed with the objective of transforming the criminal justice system into a modern, efficient, effective and integrated system. This paper from the Institute of Security Studies analyses one IJS project, the Port Elizabeth Court Centre, in which the private sector and the state have worked together in a symbiotic relationship in the hope of improving South Africa’s poorly performing criminal justice system. The IJS Court Centre Project seeks to improve court and case management at magistrates court level. Using the best practices from a diversity of subsidiary projects, the Port Elizabeth Court Centre has significantly improved the performance of one of the busiest magistrates courts in the country.
The New Law Courts in Port Elizabeth have been at the forefront of developing the IJS Court Centre Project in South Africa. One of its strengths is that it evolved gradually over time, adding components to the Centre as its capacity expanded and additional role players committed themselves to the Centre’s overall objective. Other findings are:
- The IJS Court Centre Project provides magistrates courts with an electronic case management system, together with more effective ways of organising the flow of work in the court environment.
- This Project brings together all criminal justice role players in one physical environment and facilitates co-operation between them to ensure that cases are better prepared for trial.
- The idea of the project is to drastically improve service delivery by: reducing the court case cycle time; reducing the awaiting trial prisoner cycle time; utilising court hours more productively; and improving the conviction rate.
- The Port Elizabeth Court Centre’s integrated approach, whereby representatives of four government departments are all given a role to play, is the key to the centre’s success in improving service delivery to the public and court users.
- Organised business in the form of Business Against Crime (BAC) is also crucial to the Court Centre success.
- The BAC-appointed IJS manager has the necessary independence to get different government departments to work together. The private sector can support capacity building through direct access to the business skills of sponsor companies.
Policy implications include:
- Criminal system reform calls for an integrated approach based on a multi-sectoral basis.
- The entrepreneurial skills and financial backing of the private sector to the reform of the criminal justice system are crucial for its success.
- The collective application of resources provided by individual companies to address problems within the criminal justice system is more effective than individual efforts.
