When the African National Congress (ANC) took power in South Africa after the first open elections in 1994, the goals of its leaders were ambitious: In addition to securing liberal rights and institutions, the party sought to address the socioeconomic needs of an impoverished population and deepen mass participation in the public sphere. In its own words, it pursued transformation: not just the transition to democracy, but the deepening and enriching of democracy that comes with true consolidation. Diana Gordon's magisterial book tracks the country's progress in one aspect of transformation: the reform of the criminal justice system. As Gordon suggests, the criminal justice system was an obvious institution to tackle: The police and courts had been the frontline enforcers of apartheid's laws. Furthermore, geared around defending the racial hierarchy instead of crime control, the existing system struggled mightily to deal with epic levels of violent crime besieging the new democracy. Only through the complete reform of these institutions could the country achieve democratic consolidation and secure the peace. In assessing South Africa's successes and failures in pursuing justice-system reform, the author makes important contributions to various literatures, including the study of criminal justice, deliberative democracy, democratization, and South African politics.

In the first part of her book, (Chapters 2–4), Gordon provides a rich and nuanced history of South Africa's criminal justice system. Throughout South Africa's history, the main purpose of the police and courts had been to buttress the racial hierarchy, ensuring cheap and compliant black labor for white farms, mines, and factories by enforcing racially biased laws. In the process, they trampled the rights of the great majority of South Africans and paid little attention to controlling crime, especially in black areas. While it comes as no surprise that the police employed brutal methods to enforce brutal laws, the author is equally critical of the courts, which have often been portrayed as tempering racially skewed legislation. To Gordon, the courts had too little power to resist the legislature, which itself was just a rubber stamp to the executive. And even if they had been able to resist, most judges were not inclined to do so. Hence, the courts provided little counterbalance to executive fiat and ultimately acted with the police to carry out the racial agendas of successive white administrations. Given this history of state violence against its own citizens and the structural underdevelopment of most of the country that accompanied it, she suggests that the country's current level of crime is tragic but not surprising. While much of this history is well known, Gordon's treatment is concise and comprehensive. Furthermore, her effort to track more than three centuries of practice, her discussions of court independence during the segregation and apartheid periods, and her arguments linking today's crime with yesterday's politics make these chapters valuable reading.

The heart of the book comes in its second half (Chapters 5–9). In these chapters, the author weaves theoretical discussions about democratic consolidation with empirical assessments of South Africa's efforts at reform. She argues that successful transformation of this system entails two components. The first is “shifting the constituency” of police and courts from the state to the citizenry. The second is deepening democracy through public empowerment in criminal justice. For Gordon, it is not enough that the criminal justice system protect individual rights. It should also invite active participation by the citizenry in its functions, for example, through community policing and/or restorative justice programs. Embracing scholarship on deliberative democracy, she contends that such participation can “foster understanding of inclusive, participatory ideals key to vibrant democracies” and help mend the fabric of damaged communities (p. 181)—actions highly relevant to successful democratization in societies with brutal and divisive pasts.

By Gordon's assessment, South Africa has made impressive progress on the first goal. The police, though still corrupt, poorly resourced, and often criminal, have relinquished military duties and now focus their efforts on fighting crime. Apartheid laws and most of the conservative judges who enforced them are gone. The courts, though underresourced and overwhelmed, balance accountability and independence and now have substantially more power than in the past. The public seems satisfied with the democratic instincts of the newly reformed institutions (though not with their apparent incapacity to stem crime). In contrast, Gordon laments that South Africa has abandoned its early efforts at encouraging public participation in the criminal justice system. Community policing efforts and the use of lay assessors in court have waned due to lack of political will. Instead, the country has attempted to solve the crime problem by pursuing punitive policies imported from the United States. She argues that such efforts play well with the electorate but have no impact on crime—the causes of which are structural and therefore unresponsive to variations in policy.

Gordon is not always convincing in her lamentations about the missed opportunities of community justice programs. While attractive in theory, her own analysis suggests that such programs face practical limitations: There is no evidence that they reduce crime, they can be expensive, and they are least likely to work in the areas that need them most. The author acknowledges these issues but suggests that the programs may still be important for building better citizens. While perhaps true, one is left wondering if perhaps the South Africans made the more practical choice by backing away from them. Improving democracy is an admirable goal, but improving the existing criminal justice system (training police, increasing their salaries, reducing corruption and crime in their ranks, opening more courts, and working through backlogs), as well as investing in the human capital of the future, may make better use of the country's meager resources. In sum, while Gordon may be correct that punitive measures are a dead end, she is less convincing that public-empowering justice programs are the way to go.

Gordon is, however, persuasive in her argument that criminal justice reform belongs on the agenda of studies of democratization. Too often, such studies focus only on electoral (and sometimes) legislative institutions, only occasionally looking at courts and seldom or at all at the police. However, as her case study of South Africa makes clear, in neglecting their study scholars of democratization have missed an important aspect of the story. By bringing this lacuna to light, Transformation and Trouble makes a major contribution. With any luck, future scholarship on democratic consolidation will continue in this tradition.