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Open Society Foundation for South Africa | |
| Building a Global Alliance for Open Society |
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Programmes |
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Criminal Justice Initiative
In 2005, Criminal Justice Initiative (CJI) made a significant shift in its strategy. It spun off its crime prevention work into a new NGO, the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention after having achieved significantly in building local South African knowledge in crime prevention and viewing the timing opportune for a more operational approach to the work.
The remaining component of the work of the CJI namely law reform, was restructured along two themes. The CJI remained engaged on the basic legal reform issues in relation to children, women and young people which remain incomplete (e.g. the Child Justice Bill, the Children’s Bill, and the Sexual Offences Bill).
The balance was refocused on the issue of accountability of the criminal justice system as a whole, and how criminal justice institutions given the substantial investments in legal reform and transformation are able to respond to the rights embodied within the Constitution. This aspect of the work was structured against the institutions of the criminal justice system being broadly categorized as policing, courts and prisons.
The CJI is both a grant - making and operationalised programme. The goal of the CJI is to build accountability within the individual agencies of the criminal justice system (i.e. police, courts, prisons), with the intention of ensuring a broader humanity, efficiency and accountability within the criminal justice process as a whole.
Overall Objectives:
• To provide grants to civil society organisations in support of an agenda to build accountability in relation to the provision of criminal justice services based on the principles and provisions of the Constitution and other international human rights instruments.
• To encourage the utilisation of a wide range of change strategies, and that change agents make active and studied choices regarding strategies. These strategies should include: applied research, research-based advocacy; litigation; advocacy; monitoring; technical support to government and civil society; and capacity-building.
• To generate, document and disseminate learning about what strategies and activities best serve an accountability agenda
• To conduct selected operationalised projects
Expected Outcomes:
• Improving the human rights practices of criminal justice agencies while improving efficiency in the criminal justice system
• Increasing accountability among the agents and agencies of the criminal justice system
• Strengthening formal and informal oversight of criminal justice agencies
• Increasing access to information and
• The development and strengthening of the capacity of civil society to engage in activities to improve government accountability
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