By: Michael L. Marumo and Connie Zulu

Maintaining good learner discipline continues to be a battle in many schools amidst debates around the human rights of learners and the effectiveness of current systems of learner discipline. The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of alternatives to corporal punishment in Mahikeng Township secondary schools of the North-West province in South Africa. A qualitative research design based on the social constructivist or interpretive paradigm was adopted in this study. Teachers who had been in the field before the official banning of corporal punishment were purposefully selected from four schools. Grade 11 and 12 learners were also purposefully sampled on the basis of their ‘maturity’ as senior learners who had been in the school long enough to experience the new, alternative disciplinary measures. Data were collected through focus group interviews, four with educators and four with learners, and thereafter subjected to qualitative data analysis procedures. The findings showed conflicting perceptions. Although some teachers and learners felt that alternative forms of discipline were effective to a certain extent, the general perception was one of scepticism. Both teachers and learners expressed the need for a return to corporal punishment in cases of serious misconduct. Some learners applauded the introduction of alternative forms of discipline only because this system replaced what was considered to be an abusive system of corporal punishment. Although teachers attributed their negative perceptions to a lack of adequate training in the implementation of alternative forms of discipline, continuous repetition by learners of the same offences for which they had been ‘positively’ disciplined resulted in learners’ negative perceptions. The main recommendation is that follow-up training and workshops on alternative forms of discipline should be regularly held for teachers to develop confidence in the use of these strategies and to improve perceptions.

A scholarly inquiry into disciplinary practices in educational institutions, January 2019

By Nixon Randy Sinaga

Indonesia maintains a punitive war on drugs policy model. Various campaigns are conducted to emphasise that drug offences are the most serious crimes. This construction is clearly contrary to international human rights standards. The Human Rights Committee defines the meaning of ‘most serious crime’ through General Comment No. 36 (2018) on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the right to life (GC/36). Paragraph 35 of GC/36 does not place drug offences as one of the most serious crimes. This further confirms that Indonesia’s war on drugs policy has been built upon an erroneous and unfounded paradigm. Law Number 35 of 2009 concerning Narcotics (Narcotics Law) which is in force until now contains offences that tend to open up extensive interpretations and overlap between one another. The implication of this overlapping offence in the Narcotics Law is the imprisonment of people who use drugs, people who have drug dependency, and people who abuse drugs. The paradigm of the most serious crime built by the government in narcotics cases actually brings problems to the conditions of correctional institutions in Indonesia. The problem is at least evident from the results of an assessment of the characteristics of people incarcerated for drug cases conducted by the Jakarta Regional Office of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, stating that at the end of 2018, the number of people in prison for drug cases reached 115,289 people or 95% of the total number of people imprisoned for special criminal cases in Indonesia. This figure is much higher than the number of people detained in corruption cases (5,110), illegal logging (890), terrorism (441), and money laundering (165).

London: International Drug Policy Consortium, 2024. 8p.