Edited by The Centre for Child Law.

Child victims and witnesses of crime are amongst the most vulnerable people in the justice system. The United Nations issued guidelines for their protection in 2005. This publication sets out the guidelines in the South African context. Does South African law reflect these guidelines? What are the challenges to be faced in order to bring South African law and practice in line with these international standards? Answers to these questions are provided in this up-to-date analysis of the current state of the law. This publication is a useful guide for students of law, as well as for practitioners who work with children in the courts. Launched during the internationally recognised “16 days of activism to end violence against women and children”, the publication is designed to be of assistance in the everyday working life of presiding officers, prosecutors, defence lawyers, social workers, intermediaries and other professionals.

Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press (PULP), 2008. 59p.

By Coleman Phillipson.

THE following three essays are not intended to be considered as separate, independent studies; they are meant to be taken together as supplementing each other, and as constituting one whole. With this intention in view, the author has been able to avoid a good deal of overlapping and repetition, which would otherwise have been inevitable. Though three men and their works are here discussed, we are concerned with but one epoch, one movement, one phase in legal evolution, which represents in many respects a turning-point in European history, and is of the utmost importance in the development of our modern civilisation. Beccaria, Bentham and Romilly are among the greatest law reformers of modern times. In their assault on the folly, injustice and cruelty of the then existing criminal jurisprudence, in their trenchant criticism of outworn codes, obscurantist traditions, blind superstitions, dogmatic technicalities, oppressive fictions, and useless relics of the past, in their proposal of rational substitutes, in their pointing the way to the light, they were intimately united. Their resemblances, like their differences, are as striking in their work as they are in their personal characteristics. In the case of Beccaria—a diffident Italian youth, shrinking from the struggles _ of men, whose small work was almost forcibly extracted from . him by his friends, and whose guarded oracular utterances soon arrested the attention of the world—we shall see vital conceptions and principles of penology in the process of germination and crystallisation; we shall see them in their triumphant conflict with the prevailing régime of sanguinary laws and barbarous methods of procedure. In the case of Bentham—that myriad-minded man, the dauntless explorer of institutions, the arch-legislator ever ready, in his jealously guarded “‘hermitage,”’ to make laws for all the nations of the earth—we shall see a prodigious multitude of ideas, schemes and systems, lavishly given to the world from a rich mine that could, surely, never be exhausted; we shall see this prolific progenitor scattering them broadcast, infusing new life into many barren places…

London: J.M. Dent, 1923. 344p.

By Louis Proal.

A Legal and Literary Study. Translated by Alfred Richard Allinson. From the preface: “…How comes it that affection may turn to hate, and lovers become the bitterest of foes — that the transition is so easy from love to loathing, from the transports of the most exalted tenderness to frenzies of the most savage anger? How is it foun so fond a feeling may grow so cruel and lead to commission of so many barbarous murders…?”

Paris. Carrington (1901) 707 pages.

By Moritz Benedikt and Edward P. Fowler.

Anatomical studies upon brains of criminals: a contribution to anthropology, medicine, jurisprudence, and psychology. “An inability to restrain themselves the repetition of crime, notwithstanding …the superior power of he lazy society, and a lack of sentiment of right and wrong…”

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1878. 204 pages.

By H. B. Irving.

“Do not let us, in all the pomp and circumstance of stately history, blind ourselves to the fact that the crimes of Frederick, or Napoleon, or their successors, are in essence no different from those of Sheppard or Peace. We must not imagine that the bad man who happens to offend against those particular laws which constitute the criminal code belongs to a peculiar or atavistic type, that he is a man set apart from the rest of his fellow-men by mental or physical peculiarities.”

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1918) 297 pages.

By the President’s Commission of Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.

“This report is about crime in America — about those who commit it, about those who are its victims, and about what can be done to reduce it….The existence of crime, the talk about crime, the reports of crime, and the fear of crime have eroded the basic quality of life of many Americans.” From the Summary.

Harrow and Heston Classic reprint. (1967) 342 pages.

By William A. Bonger.

Here is the classic socialist theory of criminality, that the causes of crime are social, not biological. And crimes, maybe all crimes, are always committed against the powerful.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. Boston. Little Brown. 1916.

By Enrico Ferri.

The positive school of criminology was b born of the three lectures Ferri gave at the University of Naples in 1901. In these essays he makes the case for the importance, possibly supremacy, of social and economics causes of crime, in contrast to the then dominant theories of biological determinism, the idea of the “born criminal.” In much of his professional life he was driven by one cause that strikes a bell today in the 21st century: the cause of social justice.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1902.

By Enrico Ferri.

In this great Italian classic in criminology, its famed author Enrico Ferri describes it as “a work of propaganda and an elementary guide for anyone who intends to dedicate himself to the scientific study of offenders and of the means of prevention and social defense against them.” Published in 1892 and in English in 1896. The book emphasizes the link between crime causation and social justice, setting him apart from his criminal anthropologist forebears.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1896.

By C. Ainsworth Mitchell.

Conflict between the Law-maker and the Law-breaker — Illustrations of Deductive Reasoning in Criminal Cases — Scientific Evidence — Scientific Assistance for the Accused — Instances of Advantages of Conflict of Scientific Evidence —Scientific Partisanship.

Boston Little Brown (1911) 282p.

By John Charles Bucknill.

In Relation to Criminal Acts. “Your Lordship, having held successively the Gkeat Seal in England and in Ireland, has been the legal guardian of all insane persons in this Kingdom. Your Lordship has also effected an extensive revision of the statutes, regulating the care and treatment of the insane and the protection of their property.”

London. Samuel Highly (1854) 156 pages.

By Robert L. Dugdale.

A study in crime, pauperism, disease and heredity. “‘The Jukes’ has long been known as one of those important books that exert an influence out of all proportion to their bulk. It is doubtful if any concrete study of moral forces is more widely known, or has provoked more discussion, or has incited a larger number of students to examine for themselves the immensely difficult problems presented by the interaction of ‘heredity’ with ‘environment.’“

London Putnam (1910) 137 pages.

By L. Forbes Winslow.

“Every form of passion described by me I consider as a " tragedy " hence the adoption of the name previous to discussing the same. As to the photographs the collection is a most unusual and an unique one.”

London Ouseley (1913) 352 pages.

By H. L. Adam.

“The Indian criminal may be said to be a much better man than the criminal of the West.”

London John Milne (1909) 360 pages.

By H. B. Irving.

“The cases in this volume have been selected from French criminal records of the nineteenth century. They are studies of real culprits, whose guilt is, in all but one instance, beyond suspicion of a doubt.”

Heinemann (1901) 356 pages.

By Charles Goring.

Classic statistical study published in 1913 measuring nearly 100 physical and mental characteristics of English convicts to determine their deviation from the normal. Notable features of the author's research methodology were the use of the newly-developed Pearson product moment correlation coefficient and the method of comparing groups of both criminals and non-criminals for the same characteristics. The author's analysis of the data rejects the view that there are specific physical and mental characteristics identifying the criminal. He further concludes that the influence of heredity and the presence of mental defectiveness are far more significant factors than parental influence in the development of criminal behavior.

HMSO (1913) 450 pages.

By Stan Baker.

Republished, by permission, from the American Magazine for April, 1907, the first of a series called “Following the Color Line,” now being published in that magazine.

American Magazine. (1907) 31 pages.

By Philip Berge Benny.

According to the Talmud.

London, Smith Elder (1880) 156 pages.

By George S. Dougherty.

George S. Dougherty, former deputy commissioner and chief of detectives New YorkPolice department. “It began with the discovery that I am a human being and regard the criminal as human.”

Appleton. (1924) 294 pages.

By August Drahms.

His personnel and environment. Introduction by Cesare Lombroso. All you need to know and more, of the born criminal and the criminal classes.

Macmillan Co. (1900) 419 pages.