Prof Muntingh is the Director of the Dullah Omar Institute, a human rights organisation based in Cape Town, South Africa. He's been involved in criminal justice reform for three decades. We spoke about:
And even why a man was imprisoned for burying his cat.
For background reading and a list of references, visit cantseethewood.com
Prof Muntingh is the Director of the Dullah Omar Institute, a human rights organisation based in Cape Town, South Africa. He's been involved in criminal justice reform for three decades. We spoke about:
And even why a man was imprisoned for burying his cat.
For background reading and a list of references, visit cantseethewood.com
Cait Macleod: When I first got in touch with today's guest, he replied to my email with a quote from the French philosopher Foucault.
“We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot see how to replace it. It is a detestable solution which one seems unable to do without. “
In this series we've heard from a British prison abolitionist. Who agrees with Foucault that prison is detestable, but argues that in fact we can do without it. We've also heard from a Norwegian prison warden. Who has witnessed the power of prison to turn criminals into better people.
These arguments sound strong in the context of countries with very little violent crime and plenty of social resources. They're less convincing if you transport your mind to my home country, South Africa. Where the murder rate is higher than some war zones. And prisons offer very little in the way of educational and social support.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to speak to today's guest.
He offers an African point of view. And just the kind of nuance you'd expect from a man who has both on-the ground-experience. And an interest in French philosophy.
You're listening to Wood for the Trees, my podcast about the messy questions. I'm Cait Macleod. This is the last episode about prison reform. So let's get started.
Would you mind just introducing yourself, telling us, you know, where you are, what you do, bit of background.
Prof Lukas Muntingh: My name is Lucas Muntingh. I head up a project called Africa Criminal Justice Reform which is situated at the Dullah Omar Institute at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. The Institute itself focuses on constitutional law, constitutional rights, rights building, with a particular focus on vulnerable groups.
So my work focuses on that intersection between human rights and criminal law and how that impacts on people, but also what are the systemic reasons for problems that we see around rights issues and the criminal justice system. So we're very much a research and advocacy outfit and we're working in South Africa, but we also have a permanent presence in Mozambique.
And then we've got various partner organizations across Southern and East Africa, and we have some friends in West Africa as well.
Cait Macleod: Okay. That's interesting. And do you find that there are a lot of commonalities between the different countries? Obviously Africa is a very diverse place. I'm curious how it's useful to be partnered with these other nations.
Prof Lukas Muntingh: There are obviously different legal systems. So, for instance, South Africa's a Roman Dutch law with some of English law. Mozambique, all the Lusophone countries are civil law. So are the Francophone countries. So , there are sometimes differences, things that you need to get used to about how the law functions, but I think the commonalities come in when we look at how the criminal justice system is impacting on people's lives, whether you are arrested under Roman Dutch law or English law, or French civil law, you are still deprived of your liberty.
Human rights are universal. And so one needs to always make sure it finds traction within that particular legal system. But there is the international law, and regional law from the African Commission on human and people's rights that one can also fall back onto.
Cait Macleod: And how did you become interested in criminal justice reform?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: After I left varsity [university] my first job was at a nonprofit organization called NICRO: The National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders and I was appointed as a contract researcher for one year to conceptualize, develop and test a victim offender mediation program.
So that's what I got interested in initially, seeing how people who are on the receiving end of the criminal justice system experience it. But also we were fortunately in a political process at the time. This was in those years, between 1990 and 1994, but also thereafter, at least until 2000, where there was a lot of scope to try things, to test things, where government was far more receptive to reform proposals than what it is now.
But, at least we have that scope and also ample donor funding, to support such initiatives, whether that be through multilateral or bilateral agreement.
Cait Macleod: Okay. Interesting. So, maybe a good place to start is how would you describe the purpose of prisons? What are they supposed to achieve?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: If one is to think about it more theoretically or even philosophically, it's a very strange thing that we deprive people of their liberty because they've broken a rule. It's not something that we've always done. If we go back in history, other mechanisms were used to punish people for breaking the rule. But we have the situation now where we accept that depriving people of their liberty is a legitimate sanction for breaking a law, especially if it's on the more serious side.
I think there's a popular perception that prison is a deterrent and politicians like that perception. But I think if we look at the facts, then we see that prison is not a deterrent. There is no evidence from anywhere in the world that imprisonment reduces crime. Or that longer terms of imprisonment are more effective than shorter terms of imprisonment. There's no evidence for that either.
So I think if we are to ask what the purpose of imprisonment at this stage is probably to satisfy our own need for vengeance. That's the purpose it serves at the moment.
It's not contributing to a safer society, at least there is not evidence that supports such a notion. So I think we are sitting with a very difficult situation where we are uncertain of what is it supposed to achieve, but we have these expectations, but we can't really see what else to do either, given that the contradictions of the prison as we know it is so obvious and glaring.
Cait Macleod: And just for a little bit of context, if we just take South Africa, for example, which way is imprisonment trending? Is it trending towards imprisoning more people for longer sentences or is it going more in the other direction?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: In South Africa, we've got the unfortunate situation that mandatory minimum sentences for certain serious crimes were introduced in 1998. Originally the plan was to provide an alternative sentence for the death penalty that was declared unconstitutional in 1994. And there were people on death row so they had to be re-sentenced, but the politicians took it upon themselves to include more offenses within the ambit of mandatory minimum sentences.
So the end result is that in, in 1994, we had some 400 people serving life imprisonment. We are now approaching 20,000 people serving life in prison.
So to send vast numbers of people for long terms of imprisonment, I don't think is going to help us in the medium term.
Cait Macleod: All right. So that's really a lot of people in prison. But South Africa does also have a lot of crimes. So. You know, if prison doesn't work. And it doesn't do the things that we think it does. It's not going to help us. What are the alternatives that are available to us? When we do have individuals committing crimes, especially violent crimes.
Prof Lukas Muntingh: Well, I think one has to see prisons within the context of what's available to the state. We know from research data and good research that if one is to reduce crime, in other words, make society safer you've got to intervene a lot earlier than at the stage of punishment. So I think firstly, our expectations of what the prison can achieve as an institution in terms of making society safer, we should temper those expectations quite strongly.
I think what one probably needs to invest a lot more in is on the prevention side. The evidence tells us the sooner we intervene the better, but also the more cost efficient and effective those interventions are, whether that is in the form of pre and postnatal care. The first hundred, the first 300 days or thousand days- there's a concept in early childhood development about it.
I also think there are a fairly significant proportion of people currently held in prisons who probably rather need to be accommodated in a psychiatric hospital than in an ordinary prison.
So all those types of interventions have been shown to be effective in steering people in a different trajectory.
Cait Macleod: There are many studies that conclude that health and socioeconomic factors are predictors of criminal behavior. The study of the Norwegian population found that children of parents in the lowest income bracket. With twice as likely to be convicted of a violent or drug crime. Compared to children with parents of average income.
Another study found that 90% of women in prison have a history of being victims of violence. And a report from the prison reform trust in the UK. Says that about half of prisoners have some form of neurodivergent condition, such as ADHD, autism, or intellectual disability.
There's also some evidence of genetic determinants of criminality, based on twin studies and studies of adopted children. These are often controversial because of their association with eugenics and other discriminatory social policies.
But regardless of whether crime begins with nature or nurture or both, it's clear that as Lucas says, there are things we can do as a society to divert people from crime.
But those things are not all cheap, easy or even likely in African nations.
When we talk about things like interventions in early childhood, it does make me think that we're trying to ask the justice system to solve problems. It's really not designed to solve. And also in the African context, you know, most countries don't have an enormous amount of resources to deliver social services.
So bearing that in mind, are there any low budget options for rehabilitative solutions that we can use to resolve some, some of these problems and tackle crime?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: Yeah. I mean, I, if, if one is talking about the African context, firstly Africa imprisons relatively few people. There's about a million people in prison in Africa. So for the entire continent, a million people. The United States has more than that on its own.
My sense is, even if we don't have a hundred percent accurate data, is that crime rates in the rest of Africa is relatively low, compared to let's say South Africa, for example. In South Africa you've got a murder rate of some 36 per 100 000 of the population. That is extremely high. Lesotho, Botswana and Zimbabwe have got similar rates. But the further north you go, it really becomes significantly lower. So I think there are differences in crime patterns.
If one is to look at cost effective solutions or affordable solutions, I think we've got little choice, but to bolster investments where we are already investing or should be investing in that relates to early childhood development, ensuring children remain on school, especially in making sure that girl children are safe at school, that they are not discouraged from school.
So those are the practical things. Prison is a very, very expensive and ineffective way to deal with repeat offending. The Sherman report has illustrated to us. It's the most expensive and least effective response to crime.
And I'm not saying it should not be done but if one is asking the question, ‘where must we invest to make society safer?’, then it's at the front end. It's on the prevention and early intervention side.
Cait Macleod: The Sherman report was commissioned in 1996 by the US Congress. And it asked the Attorney General to investigate the effectiveness of state funded crime prevention programs. It found that many didn't work, some were not tested at all, and others were quite effective but the main finding is that the greatest success in crime prevention happened when programs focused on areas of concentrated poverty.
Some of the programs included in the report included community-based mentoring, parent training for managing troublesome children and vocational training.
One of the reasons that girls' education in particular may be important for crime prevention is that, according to the World Bank, educated women have fewer and healthier children and an educated female population can help produce levels of poverty in a community
Okay. So you're talking about a sort of prevention is better than cure approach. That's probably going to take a couple of decades to bear fruit. So are there any more immediate alternatives?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: I've seen interesting projects in various African countries related to skills development inside prisons, agricultural projects. What people often forget about, or maybe have not observed in African prisons is that the architecture is significantly different from what we see in European or North American prisons. It's almost like military barracks and the prisoners only sleep inside the barracks. So the rest of the day they're outside and the security infrastructure, the fences and so on are, not very, strong.
So there's a very high reliance on individuals complying with the rules of the institution. And so I'm in my own observation countries like Malawi and Zambia is that there's a fairly constructive relationship between prisoners and staff, which I think counts in favor of any notions of rehabilitation and successful reintegration.
We know this from research in the UK, is that that relationship between prisoners and staff are essential, not only for the internal harmony, but also for the personal wellbeing of prisoners, but also what happens to them after that. I think there are things that we can do that are not necessarily called rehabilitation programs, but that we know are effective in assisting people to cope with life on the outside again.
Cait Macleod: If you listened to the interview I did with Are Hoidal, the former warden of Halden prison in Norway, you may recall that he spoke about the close relationship between prisoners and guards at Halden and how important that is for rehabilitation. He also mentioned the architecture at Holden prison, which was specifically designed not to look like a prison. And in fact looks more like a university campus.
It's interesting that something practiced at what is considered one of the best and most well-funded prisons in the world is quietly happening in African prisons. And while staff are one of the biggest expenses in European prisons, labour is much cheaper in the developing world. So a high ratio of staff to prisoners and a focus on building relationships seems like a really strong strategy that could work anywhere
If we're talking about prisons in democracies, how difficult is it to monitor and prevent human rights abuses in prisons in democracies? Is it something that we can realistically keep in check and prevent reliably?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: We can do it, but it's not easy. I mean, there are various models of oversight, whether that is through a lay visitors scheme, like in England and Wales, or a judicial inspectorate of prisons like in South Africa, you've got a high court judge heading up an inspectorate. Many countries have human rights commissions. And very often the human rights commission fulfills that type of oversight role. In Namibia it is the ombudsman that sort of volunteers to take on that portfolio and has done very good work on that. Then there are also those countries who have ratified the optional protocol to the convention against torture, OPCAT, and must establish a national preventive mechanism.
So that mechanism is mandated to monitor, to inspect and to report on conditions of detention treatment with the view to prevent torture and other ill treatment. So there are these things. In the end, no matter how good the design is, the evidence from a project we worked on, which was a 16 country comparative study on what works in preventing torture, said well there's no real evidence to indicate that monitoring prisons per se - and this is the core principle underlying the optional protocol is that monitoring prisons will reduce the incidents of torture - will prevent torture, the evidence doesn't support that.
Cait Macleod: Okay. That's a little bit surprising. So monitoring doesn't stop torture. Um, but do we know what does work?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: What seems to work is if the monitoring mechanism has a close working relationship with the prosecution services. In other words, that if the monitors see something they can say, ‘listen, there is a problem here, a rights violation and it needs to be investigated, and there ought to be a prosecution if there is sufficient evidence,’ the evidence tells us then it becomes more effective.
Because then people who commit those violations are held accountable and they, hopefully would lose their employment and they would be prosecuted criminally, and they should ideally be asked to compensate the victim, but also make up for the losses to the state. It's perhaps the most difficult aspect of this work on prisons and human rights is to convince the prosecution services to actively pursue rights violations perpetrated by state officials.
There is an enormous reluctance on prosecution services to do that because it's typically police officers or prison officials who perpetrate those violations and prosecutors are very dependent on police officers to do their investigations. They will tend to look the other way, make it go away. They don't have the same close relationship with prison staff. They're not functionally dependent on them, but there's no doubt a type of silent allegiance to a fellow civil servant, who is in the criminal justice and, who are also a law enforcement officer and all those sentiments come to the fore, making prosecutions of state officials a very rare occasion when it comes to rights violations.
Cait Macleod: So it's interesting talking about, kind of, culture, the culture of law enforcement officials. Do you think there's a cultural problem with the way that police and, prison guards and maybe society more broadly perceive criminals? Should we be trying to kind of de-stigmatize criminals or, or is it useful that we have a moral stigma against people who break the law?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: There are a couple of questions there and the one is if we're talking about law enforcement, what is that particular history of law enforcement? If you look at Africa, the model of law enforcement and particularly policing and imprisonment was one that was imported from Europe through the colonial powers.
So what we see today is very visible vestiges of colonial policing and colonial law enforcement still present in Africa and that model dates back to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was a paramilitary force. So that was, at least in the Anglophone colonies, that was the model that was exported.
And, with that colonial mentality came particular understandings of who belongs where. And who is good and who is not good. So it was all these stigmas, in-groups and out-groups. All those things are still at play. And there isn't a clear answer for me at this stage but it's really a case of if you walk around in African cities you look at how bylaws are enforced or other expressions of law enforcement, it is still this police, this law enforcement system that is there to protect the interests of the elite. It's not necessarily a police service or law enforcement system, in service of the people. And so that, in our set up, presents particular challenges.
Cait Macleod: How did those stigmas manifest? I mean, what does that kind of look like?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: For me, it's more about how the law is dealing with issues of poverty and status and to what extent poor people are criminalized for doing what they need to do in order to survive. I mean, we've come across countless cases in prisons in various countries where we did research of people who were arrested for administrative offenses. There's no victim, but they're thrown in prison because they were in possession of forestry products or they buried their cat without a license. I’m not making that cat story up. It's true.
So we see this almost expanding framework of rules and regulations that criminalize more and more actions in order to - whether it's a source of revenue or whether it's politicians’ response to try and pretend that they are in control of the situation.
We have to keep in mind, African states are not necessarily strong states in the sense that Britain has a strong, functional state with a functioning bureaucracy and administration that goes down to every little village. In the African context, it's very much the case of degrees where the capital may be well run, but the hinterland belongs to the chiefs. And in those remote areas, then justice has its own way of functioning that are not necessarily interacting with the European-inspired justice system and then there's very often a dual system or parallel system functioning.
Cait Macleod: This is quite a theoretical question, but if you had to imagine a country where all the resources were available in terms of education and early childhood health care and all the other things that prevent widespread crime, they're obviously still going to be people that will commit crimes, even in that environment.
How would you imagine the, kind of, ideal justice system in that world? Would there still be people who needed to be locked away for life sentences or in that kind of imaginary world would we be able to do away with prisons entirely?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: I think there are some people who shouldn't be in the general population because they pose a threat to themselves or to others because of mental conditions.
I think they are also people who commit crimes based on greed or jealousy or any of those human failings. But I think one then needs to say that prison is there, but it has a very, very narrow scope and the purpose of imprisonment must be to reduce re-offending. If we continue using it as we are using it now and…I think Britain is the same, U.S. is also the same…is just imprisoning more and more people, then we're not going to get it right.
I must also be quick to add, because I am on record, to say that we're not sending enough people to prison in South Africa but that is because the criminal justice system itself is failing and failing in a material way.
So we've got extremely high rates of interpersonal violence, of sexual violence, of murder and all those really serious crimes. These are people who keep on offending. I mean, the chances are very good that there's a relatively small number of people who are committing these crimes. That's the research from elsewhere as well. So there definitely needs to be more effective law enforcement in the case of South Africa, but that's a very particular context.
I think one also needs to think, in terms of imprisonment in shorter rather or even periodic terms. These sentences that are, what, 25 years. I mean, that's the requirement in South Africa before a person can be considered for parole is 25 years and that applies across the board.
So whether you're a first offender or a multiple offender, if you have committed an offence attracting life imprisonment, you're going to sit for 25 years before you can be considered for parole. Why is this such a blunt instrument? I think one can get far more creative, in how you use the deprivation of liberty and the tariffs applicable.
You say but okay you know, "yes you are under sentence for the next 20 years, but let's start off with five years in prison and we let you out see how it goes, you know. You come back, if you misbehave.” I think we're just very unimaginative about the use of prison at the moment. And that we think that punishment in and of itself will actually assist people in coping more effectively with the outside world.
There was a Danish prison administrator He was the head of, uh, I think the prison is called Rinner. I might be pronouncing it incorrectly, but he said, "How can you prepare people for freedom in captivity?” And it makes completely sense. If you have a regime where you make all the decisions for people, when they get up, when they go to sleep, when they eat, when they do this, when they do that. But then you go after 20 years, you say, you're now free. You can do as you please. Well, you've actually not trained them to do as they please. You've trained them to do as you please.
There are so many problems here with prisons and what we've ended up with.
Cait Macleod: I read an interview with a Norwegian prison guard, a female prison guard in a men's prison. And the interviewer asked if she was frightened to do that job. And she said, no. She says, she'd be more frightened to have men released from prison who hadn't interacted with a woman in 25 years.
So I thought it was a very good point. So in South Africa, well, maybe more broadly in Africa at the moment, is there much use of things like, instead of sending to prison, using probation or other kinds of diversion programs? Is there any success with that kind of thing being used as an alternative?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: At one stage, an organization called Penal Reform International, they were advocating for the use of community service orders in a number of African countries. And they got it running I think in Kenya, Zimbabwe and a few others. I remember in the case of Zimbabwe they actually were able to bring, because they made community service orders or the consideration for community service orders mandatory in law.And they were able to bring the prison population down from being well over capacity to under capacity.
So there are successes. I think the issue is about the sustainability of those successes because when PRI pulled out of Africa, that story came to a halt. I think Zimbabwe also then shortly thereafter developed its own problems.
In the case of Kenya, it seems that they were targeting the wrong offenders for community service orders. These were people who would not have gone to prison. So yes, it's good to not do community service, but the intervention is not having an impact on your problem, being prison overcrowding.
South Africa has a very well developed parole system and has always had it, as far as I know, but it's not the same in other African countries where it's a combination of sometimes yes, it can be a special decision to let somebody out. Otherwise the rule of thumb is that you serve until sentence expiring.
Or if I understand the Mozambican system correctly is that you serve a standard tariff and then you are released, but there's no supervision after that. The issue for me is, is there's probably not much standing in the way of law to facilitate early release mechanisms and it's not difficult to write law.
It is about the conceptualization, how the problem is defined, the response defined and then how the results are monitored. It's typically where one finds resistance is from the judiciary, probably more magistrates than judges, [who] are often resistant or suspicious. They say, “well the community wouldn't want this.They want to see people in prison.” Well you know, that's their perception. I think the situation is a bit more complex than that.
Cait Macleod: As an organization, what's your reform wishlist at the moment? If you had to pick a few things that you'd love changed, what would there be?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: All roads lead to the prosecuting authority.
Cait Macleod: Oh dear.
Prof Lukas Muntingh: Yeah.
I've got the South African situation more in mind than perhaps other countries, but if the prosecuting authority is not properly independent, if it does not hold perpetrators accountable, then it becomes really difficult to implement any reforms.
You can do all the human rights training that you want with police officials and prison officials and tell them not to torture, but if you do not prosecute people for perpetrating torture, all that training will not help. My wishlist is essentially that one needs to have a transparent prison system and a police system where there's a lot of information available to which the public and members of parliament and so forth have access to and then the flip side of that is, is that if, if problems are identified, there must be accountability. It really is meaningless for us to talk about human rights if prison warders can beat a prisoner to death and get a written warning. Really, then we're wasting our time.
Cait Macleod: So that's kind of a point on the wishlist, but it's also an obstacle to reform.
What are some of the other obstacles to reform or some of the factors that affect policymaking around this area?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: We competing very often with fake news and public opinion and stereotypical perceptions. If you say to parliamentarians, “The research tells us that longer prison sentences do not reduce crime.” Well, sorry, they're just not going to believe you. And they'll say, “No. We want to!” The obstacle is one about how, from a policy making perspective, we relate to knowledge and evidence.
Do I regard the source of knowledge as an expert, as reliable? He's a special rapporteur from the UN or a researcher from the university, or whatever that person's credentials may be. Does the politician say, “you know, actually I know you've been looking at this problem.This is your recommendation and I accept it.” You may want to clarify one or few things, but do you come with this argument is that, “No, we're going to go in the opposite direction because that's what we want to do,” and then you are surprised that you don't get the results you hoped for.
So I think that relationship with knowledge and evidence is a major obstacle, at this stage.
Cait Macleod: Well, it does seem that all over the world, people like to vote for governments that say they're going to be tough on crime, which normally means harsher sentencing. And so I'm intrigued to know, you know, given that that happens everywhere, whether it's really possible to convince people that longer sentences or prison in general doesn't act as a deterrent. Do you think there's capacity in South Africa, particularly where a lot of people are very fearful of crime and will have experienced violent crime, do you think there's capacity for that to change?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: I think South Africans will just be too happy if more people are sent to prison.
And I think we must just be very careful about these tough on crime positions held by politicians, especially when they start talking about zero tolerance, because they're not doing it with any sincerity, they just want votes. They will probably think, “Well, if you, if you round up all the street children in Cape Town, you're being tough on crime.” Well, no you, you're creating tomorrow's prison population.
Cait Macleod: You think they'd be tempted to actually choose measures that have an impact on crime? Because voters would love that.
Prof Lukas Muntingh: Ja I mean, I think this is where politicians find it difficult is their frame of reference is four or five years because that's a term of office. To change crime patterns takes at least a generation. So let's say 15 to 20 years when children born today are coming into the age of where they start committing petty crimes. And so on. So we're looking at least 10 years, but you've got to realize that you've got to invest now in health and ECD and women, all those types of things in order to have that dividend of reduced criminal involvement, something to 15 years into the future.
And once it starts happening, I believe it feeds on itself. But you can't say “we got to reduce crime” and then you cut the social development budget, the health budget, and programs, and you deny donor funding support to NGOs and all those things you've cut and say “well, we want to reduce crime”. Then you're not understanding the problem,
Cait Macleod: So last question. I did another episode on drug policy and legalizing narcotics. And I wanted to ask you what you thought about that. Do you think we should be decriminalizing drugs?
Prof Lukas Muntingh: So the issue of drugs, especially possession charges is that it's an extremely handy tool for the police to exert influence and to criminalize certain people, extort, bribes, victimize people, often not with real intention to actually prosecute.
What comes from the alcohol sector is harm reduction. That's also a popular view in the drug reform sector is focus on harm reduction. Criminalization is not going to get you anywhere. I think there is merit in pursuing criminal charges or criminal cases against influential people in the drug trade, kingpins, drug bosses, organized crime, but for the low level user, really?
Cait Macleod: So I've heard four perspectives from people in four countries. And here's what I'm left with. We need to pare back the prison system as far as practically and politically viable. Ditch the sentences that achieve very little but incur high human and capital costs. Shorten the sentences that are long for no other reason than vengeance. Reinvest the money you save on tried-and-tested, targeted crime prevention programs à la the Sherman report. Use low cost rehabilitative tools like treating people with dignity, encouraging strong relationships between prisoners and guards, and letting inmates spend time outdoors. But in the end, acknowledge that prison is the detestable solution we cannot do without.
You've been listening to Wood for the Trees with me, Cait Macleod. A big thank you to my guest Professor Lukas Muntingh. Next up, we'll be exploring protest, why protest policing turns violent so often, and where the lines should be drawn when governments weigh up the right to protest against limiting disruption.
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