Since 1994, South Africa has experienced a flurry of changes in policy, plans, strategies, laws, and ideas. The dramatic shift from an autocratic to a democratic society required an extensive overhaul of major societal institutions, including the criminal justice system. One of the government’s main priorities became the National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS), which recognized the need to concentrate on the social and developmental causes of crime as well as the importance of collaborating with community stakeholders. The authors maintain that this focus on long-term crime prevention became blurred as political and public pressure demanded that the criminal justice system focus on short-term fixes to South Africa’s crime problem. Since 1999, the government’s response to crime has been in the form of tough law enforcement intervention and new laws designed to improve the criminal justice system functioning. Despite these problems, the authors maintain that the criminal justice system has performed well and must now focus on increasing the public’s sense of safety and developing programming aimed at the social and developmental crime causes that lie beyond the reach of police and courts. Notes, references