Key questions in contemporary South African criminology are examined in these essays, including Why is crime such a persistent problem? and How have crime control practices altered in response to the challenges of the post-apartheid era?. Teachers, researchers, policy advisors, and practitioners challenge some of the received wisdom re-emerging in a discipline in danger of both forgetting its own history, and of misunderstanding the role of critical social science in a democratic South Africa.

Bill Dixon is a lecturer in the department of criminology at Keele University in the United Kingdom. Elrena van der Spuy is a senior lecturer at the department of criminal justice, faculty of law at the University of Cape Town and former director of the Institute of Criminology. In collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Pretoria, she conducts research into the form, content, and impact of international developmental assistance in support of criminal justice reform in southern Africa.