Criminal Law (Books and Journals)
- SA Crime Quarterly From No. 2002-1, July 2002 to No. 2022-71, November 2022 Sabinet African Journals, 2021
- South African Criminal Law Journal From No. , May 2019 to No. , October 2022 Juta Journals, 2021
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Understanding crime in the context of COVID-19 : The case of Saldanha Bay Municipality
South Africa faces high levels of crime. The Saldanha Bay Municipality, the setting of this study, is laden with poverty, unemployment and gangsterism that deprive quality of life and contribute to social ills. While crime management and prevention strategies require information regarding crime trends, this information for the Saldanha Bay Municipality area is limited. Hence, the study aimed to...
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Protecting Fido, protecting the family : Developing domestic violence law to include companion animals
This article argues that by developing domestic violence laws to include and protect individual companion animals in the home, it might be possible to prevent violence against other victims in the home. Protecting a companion animal from persistent violence by, for example, having properly integrated reporting systems between government departments, could protect various vulnerable members of the
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Keeping them out of prison : A restorative justice education intervention with prison inmates in Lesotho
This research project involved planning and implementing a restorative justice education programme with prison inmates in Lesotho aimed at restoring their self-worth and dignity, and to evaluate its outcomes. The project began with focus group discussions with first-time offenders, repeat offenders and ex-inmates to identify the main challenges faced by ex-inmates. It was found that these were...
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‘Bad, sad and angry’ : Responses of the SAPS leadership to the dangers of policing
Danger is an integral part of the fabric of South African society. Yearly statistics regularly underscore the extent of danger experienced through reported acts of violence. As generally office bound executives, senior police officers rarely encounter this violence to the same extent as frontline officers. 2 These police leaders are ultimately responsible for the strategies and operations...
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Prison protests in South Africa : A conceptual exploration
This article explores the nature and causes of prisoner protests, looking at it first from a sociological perspective and second, a rights perspective. The fact that people end up in prison following due process does not mean that their imprisonment is not a contested arena in the sense that prisoners are generally aware of their rights, even when curtailed. Importantly, this curtailment has...
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Progressive or regressive rape case law? : Tshabalala v S; Ntuli v S 2020 2 SACR 38 CC
The Constitutional Court's decision in Tshabalala v S; Ntuli v S 2020 2 SACR 38 CC is undoubtedly a step in the right direction towards rape law reform in South Africa, however, this article challenges the court's decision to extend the application of the common law doctrine to common law rape. It is argued that the court could have highlighted the power dynamics at play during the commission of...
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‘Bad, sad and angry’ : Responses of the SAPS leadership to the dangers of policing
Danger is an integral part of the fabric of South African society. Yearly statistics regularly underscore the extent of danger experienced through reported acts of violence. As generally office bound executives, senior police officers rarely encounter this violence to the same extent as frontline officers. 2 These police leaders are ultimately responsible for the strategies and operations...
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Protest injuries : A situational analysis of injurious protests in Gauteng
In this article, we investigate contextual and situational circumstances of protest events that record injurious outcomes for civilians and examine how these differ from protests which do not record such outcomes. Using the IRIS database, we examine how contextual factors, including protest period, protest location, reason for protest, and situational factors, such as type of protest, damage to...
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Keeping them out of prison : A restorative justice education intervention with prison inmates in Lesotho
This research project involved planning and implementing a restorative justice education programme with prison inmates in Lesotho aimed at restoring their self-worth and dignity, and to evaluate its outcomes. The project began with focus group discussions with first-time offenders, repeat offenders and ex-inmates to identify the main challenges faced by ex-inmates. It was found that these were...
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Understanding crime in the context of COVID-19 : The case of Saldanha Bay Municipality
South Africa faces high levels of crime. The Saldanha Bay Municipality, the setting of this study, is laden with poverty, unemployment and gangsterism that deprive quality of life and contribute to social ills. While crime management and prevention strategies require information regarding crime trends, this information for the Saldanha Bay Municipality area is limited. Hence, the study aimed to...
-
Prison protests in South Africa : A conceptual exploration
This article explores the nature and causes of prisoner protests, looking at it first from a sociological perspective and second, a rights perspective. The fact that people end up in prison following due process does not mean that their imprisonment is not a contested arena in the sense that prisoners are generally aware of their rights, even when curtailed. Importantly, this curtailment has...
- Recent Case: Sentencing
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Damages for injuries arising from unlawful shooting by police and other security agents: South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland/Eswatini (2)
The discussion of the South African cases involving wrongful police shootings and the damages awarded in that regard formed the subject of the discussion in the first part of this series. That discussion continues in the current part two which winds up with the analysis of the cases from Lesotho and Malawi involving injuries caused by the use of firearms by police officers and other security...
- Comparing sentencing for robbery with Strafzumessung für Raub
- Clarity, consistency, and community convictions: Understanding the defence of consent in South African criminal law
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The criminal jurisdiction of the Seychelles Employment Tribunal
The Seychellois Employment Tribunal was established under s 73A of the Employment Act (the Act). Section 6(3)(1) of Schedule 6 to the Act provides that 'the Tribunal shall have exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine employment and labour related matters'. Under the Act, employment and labour matters can be divided into two categories: civil and criminal. Section 76 of the Act provides for...
- Recent Case: Law of evidence
- Recent Case: Criminal procedure
- Recent Case: General principles of criminal law
- Recent Case: Criminal procedure
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The importance of explicit reasons when overturning a conviction: Non-compliance with the competency test or the requirement to admonish complainants
There are numerous cases in which magistrates failed to properly administer the competency test or to admonish complainants in terms of s 164(1) of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977. In many of these cases, the magistrates nonetheless found the accused guilty based on the inadmissible evidence of the complainants. On review or appeal, however, the higher courts set the decisions of the...
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The Black Flame (part three): Snyman’s Criminal Law
Part three of this trilogy of papers (entitled after WEB du Bois's trilogy of novels titled the Black Flame) concludes an extraordinarily prolonged attempt to open a dialogue with the esteemed author and revisor of Snyman's Criminal Law. The core message of this trilogy is that a small window into a vibrant indigenous criminal law scholarship that is not perpetually northbound-gazing towards...
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Damages for injuries arising from unlawful shooting by police and other security agents: South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland/Eswatini (1)
The fact that the police and other security officers are authorised to carry firearms in the performance of their duties does not mean that they can lawfully use them at their whim or caprice. This is especially so if it be said that the objects of the police service are, inter alia, to protect the safety of its members and safeguard the public from harm. Although the primary duty of the police...
- Recent Case: Law of evidence
- Recent Case: Prosecution and sentencing of maintenance defaulters
- Recent Case: General principles and specific offences
- Recent Case: Law of Evidence
- Recent Case: General principles and specific offences
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Independent judicial research of forensic evidence in criminal trials – A South African perspective
As forensic scientific evidence becomes not only more advanced but progressively more important in criminal trials, so too does the pressure on presiding officers to accurately assess such evidence, not only for admissibility but also reliability. In the United States of America (USA), judges are mandated to act as gatekeepers of expert opinion and as such are tempted to engage in independent...
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The right to bail pending trial in Uganda
Article 23(6)(a) of the Constitution of Uganda (1995) states that an arrested person is 'entitled' to apply to court for bail (discretionary bail). Articles 23(b) and (c) require a court to release on bail a person who has been awaiting trial in custody for a specified number of days (mandatory bail). Jurisprudence of Ugandan courts on bail pending trial shows that courts have dealt with two main