There are almost 190 000 men, women and children (mostly men) in South Africa ’s prisons. Literally hundreds of thousands more trudge through their gates every year. Those who are entering the system find themselves in institutions that are overcrowded and understaffed, and in which they must learn to cope with endemic violence and constant material deprivation. Those who are leaving after months or years of confinement are seldom better equipped to deal with the challenges of life than they were before their incarceration. Indeed, for a large number, to resort to criminality is made all the more likely by the brutalisation they endured in prison and the impact of a criminal record on their job prospects.
This pattern is common throughout the world. But it is not the only way in which prisons – the basic functions of which are identical in most countries – are similar. Another example is the prison gang, a phenomenon that is so common that it is a symptom of some essential feature of the institutions in which it is found.
Prisoners all over the world, cut off from the rest of the world by the bars that surround them, develop distinctive and distinguishing social institutions to give shape and meaning to their lives. That this is so is hardly surprising since one of the intended effects of prison life, with its complete, 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week subjugation of diverse human beings to a set of rigid institutional rules and timetables, is to dissolve the individual identity of prisoners into the mass of their fellows. The quest to preserve one’s identity, to re-establish, if only for oneself, the idea that one is a self-directed agent, often leads prisoners to develop their own institutions and through these to craft new identities that reshape and rearticulate their experience in more glamorous hues. These institutions, in other words, are premised on the deep human need to assert one’s existence even in the face of the hu miliation, mortification and alienation that comes of being a prisoner.1 The result, often, is the existence of gangs.
Prison gangs in South Africa and many other jurisdictions are criminal enterprises – making money from drugs and robbery and extortion, for instance – and quasi-religious, cult-like institutions. In South Africa they are bound together through legends and arcane rituals shot through with references to the semi-mythological figure of Nongoloza, an early-20th-century bandit who later became, ironically, a prison warder.
If these gang cults have not exactly flourished over the generations, they have more than held their own against the authorities who run South Africa ’s prisons, constantly reproducing themselves through complex rituals of recruitment, initiation and promotion. Of all the more important institutions of socialisation in South Africa, these are perhaps the least known and the least researched. This is a pity, not only because they are interesting in their own right, but because their effects on prison management and prisoners are deeply problematic.
Fortunately, with the publication in 2004 of Jonny Steinberg ’s The number and the monograph Nongoloza’s children that preceded it, this gap has, to a very large extent, been closed.
The number, Steinberg’s biography of Magadien Wentzel, an unemployed former prisoner now in his forties who spent about half his adult life in prison and was a leader in one of the prison gangs, is a large, complex book. It weaves together an intimate history of the coloured community in Cape Town; how that community experienced the final decades of apartheid; and the transition to democracy; as complete a description of the structure and mythology of the prison gangs as can be found; and a heartbreakingly human tale of how these forces shaped the author’s primary subject, Magadien Wentzel.
Like many coloured boys of his day, Wentzel, whose family were relocated from District Six to the ghettos of the Cape Flats in the 1960s, spent part of his desperately deprived youth in reformatories. For the rest, he was sucked into a local street gang, which led, inevitably, to his committing crimes of increasing seriousness. Most were simple property crimes or arose from the violence that came of the turf battles in which his gang was involved. Later he would commit crimes of dishonesty, stealing from his employers. It was these crimes that led to his arrest, conviction and being sent to jail for the first of numerous prison terms.
When we first meet Wentzel, he is in his last few months of his latest sentence. We meet a man who, despite a life of crime and a long career in prison gangs, is deeply committed to ‘going straight’ on his release and reconstructing his relationship with his family. The puzzle is where this commitment to going straight comes from.
The era in which Wentzel grew up was one of ever-tightening cycles of political conflict. He was not untouched by this and, for a while, participated on the margins of the resistance struggle. This changed dramatically when he entered prison and was quickly recruited into one of the gangs. There he latched onto the gang’s self-image as a bastion of resistance against apartheid in the prisons, and a bearer of a distinctive and valuable culture. The experience was life changing.
The gangs offered an identity from which Wentzel could draw strength and re-imagine himself. This is not to romanticise prison gangs and Steinberg is especially careful to show their malign influence: the violence they perpetrate on warders, their own members and members of other gangs; and their ruthless exploitation, often sexual, of other prisoners. But, ironically, in imbibing the gang’s ideology, Wentzel was able to build up the strength of character that, nearly twenty years later, would make it possible for him to give up criminality.
Wentzel’s transformation is the result partly of his character and partly of the transformation through which the country, its prisons and the prison gangs have gone. One of the principal raisons d’être for the existence of the gangs – resistance to apartheid – has gone with the transition to democracy. Others remain, such as the need to foster and hone a positive self-image, however warped, while in prison, and the need to maintain pressure on the authorities to improve living conditions. For Wentzel, however, the gangs, which have become channels through which drugs are sold and power is brokered, have become corrupt and corrupting. He is disillusioned by their failure to live up to the principles they espouse. He is older and wiser and, with half his life gone, he realises that he has little positive to show to his family, especially his daughter. For all these reasons, Wentzel is committed to going straight and the final chapters of the book trace the enormous difficulties he must overcome – his poverty, his family’s desperate straits, the temptations of easy money from selling drugs and committing crime – as he tries to fulfil this ambition.
The number is a complex, powerful biography told with masterful care and subtle insight. It is an important book about the way the forces of history and the institutional logic of prisons toss ordinary men and women about. It is essential, if sobering, reading for anyone dedicated to the reform of the criminal justice system, especially prisons.
Antony Altbeker2
Notes
For an exploration of these issues, see J Steinberg, Nongoloza’s children, Centre for the Study of Violence, Johannesburg, 2004.
Full disclosure note: the reviewer of this book counts himself a friend of the author Jonny Steinberg.
GLOBAL DISORDER
How To Avoid A
Fourth World War
Robert Harvey
Robinson, London, 2003, 477 pages
This book looks at the factors that are likely to create an unstable world, possibly even leading to a fourth world war in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 period. Harvey identifies a wide range of issues that are taking place around the world, some of which are already creating conflict. He looks at the threat of terrorist organisations, border disputes between nuclear India and Pakistan, the ‘menacing’ North Korea, the implications of the fissures between the US and the EU, and the contradictions that are inherent in the globalisation of capitalism. The book explores these issues in vivid detail, introducing some of the debates in the fields of international relations and security studies. Without doubt, Harvey is well versed in historical detail and uses this intelligently to put forward some of his arguments.
The common thread running throughout the book is that the above factors have the potential to draw the world into another world war if they are left unchecked. The US and the EU therefore need to form a partnership to create order in the international system and enforce this through a reformed United Nations system. The US should forsake its unilateralism and seek to build consensus around its foreign policy so that it is not viewed as a rampaging bull.
The book debunks the myth that Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant faith. The author shows that fundamentalism is not specific to Islam. Most religions have produced extremists who have sought religious legitimation of their views through perverted interpretations of the scriptures. Such fundamentalism is a perversion of religion for political gain. It is more a process of struggle against the order of the day in view of the inability to influence the political process through peaceful means. Thus, it is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
The lack of genuine democracy in the Middle East is very significant, if only because of its strategic importance to the US. Thus Harvey argues that it is important for the US to engage the rulers of Saudi Arabia in order to open up democratic space to guarantee the flow of oil from that country. Therefore it is important for the US to moderate some of the excesses of the royal family in Saudi Arabia to allay the feelings of discontent that are leading to increasing extremist militancy in that country. Should the US fail to do this, it may be forced to intervene militarily to guarantee its supply of oil.
Another area of concern is the erosion of democracy in all democratic countries because of the influence wielded by multinational corporations and private business. Multinational corporations can have a devastating impact on livelihoods in the Third World and this book brings this to light. It emphasises that the international political economic system must be reformed.
A disconcerting feature of the book is the way in which it legitimises and even extols US domination of the world. The author speaks of the world as if it were a state of America. The analogy of a sheriff is used, where the US consults only to legitimise actions designed to enhance its national interest. By ‘consulting’, the author means essentially with the EU and Japan.
The split on foreign policy between the US and EU over Iraq, Harvey argues is ‘one of the most serious problems in the post cold war era’. It is a problem because ‘it would be nice to have two sheriffs’. The US and the EU are interdependent and mutually reinforcing in the international arena. This is undeniable. What is debatable, however, is the extent to which this is a bad thing. It can be argued that it holds benefits for less developed countries (LDCs) that are bullied and cajoled by the major powers. A divergence in foreign policy between the EU and the US will limit the excesses of these powers. Cooperation will be sought from the Third World in the pursuit of legitimating policies, whereas a harmonisation of policies between these two will lead to the further marginalisation of the Third World in the -consultation stakes.
The US and the EU have insisted on retaining patents on HIV/AIDS medication in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), although this disease is ravaging the poor countries that cannot afford to purchase these medicines. They have consistently maintained agricultural subsidies while forcing less powerful countries to liberalise their markets, thus rendering their produce uncompetitive. To now argue that these countries represent some enlightened force for good in the international environment is to belittle the efforts of those who have been attempting to form Third World coalitions in order to refashion the international system based on equity and justice.
The myth that the US is God’s gift to humankind is perpetrated vigorously without much consideration for historical experience. Hence Harvey talks of a ‘benign empire’. In comparative and historical terms, this is the case. However, the US is not so benevolent as Harvey would have us believe. On the contrary, it acts only to further its own sometimes narrowly defined national interests. Where benevolence does not serve this, it is sacrificed. The ‘stone ageing’ of Iraq despite international opinion is an instance of the self-centred element in US foreign policy, which betrays the outdated crass realism of Morgenthau in foreign policy circles in that country. The reluctance to intervene to halt the Rwandan genocide in 1994 is a demonstration of this. What is in it for the US is always a prime consideration and no one outside the US is under any illusions about this.
On the question of terrorist organisations, Harvey portrays them as merely groups of fanatics who exploit the concerns of the poor for their own benefit. This is an incomplete analysis. Without justifying the use of extra-legal and inhumane means for political goals, it may be said that terrorist groups exploit legitimate gripes with the US and most of the Western world. Support for Israel and Saudi Arabia are just two of these. The West has shown no urgency in engaging Israel and Saudi Arabia to bring about changes in dealing with Palestine and reforming the Saudi political system. Instead, the USA continues to support these regimes to the detriment of millions of Muslims. The disempowered are bound to resort to extreme measures to regain their power. That is precisely what terrorist organisations thrive on – riding on the back of justifiable causes. That the measures used are cruel does not diminish the validity of the concerns that prompt these organisations into action. Thus, employing only the military to deal with this threat misses the point altogether. Empowering the disempowered is bound to bring about some respite for those who are the objects of terrorist actions.
Global disorder makes for interesting and entertaining, reading regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the arguments put forward. What is likely to interest readers is the clear background he gives for each topic and the way that this crystallises the issues. Some of the arguments, such as the need for reform of the UN and the international political economic systems, are thought provoking and worth digesting, yet at times one feels that the author does not consider some of the major arguments that go against his own. The major shortcoming of the book is the relegation of the Third World to a position of relative insignificance in international affairs.
Thembinkosi Gcoyi (Research Intern, DSP)
AGENDA SETTING AND PUBLIC POLICY IN AFRICA
Contemporary Perspectives on Developing Societies
Kelechi A Kalu (Ed)
Hampshire (UK) and Burlington (US):
Ashgate, 2004, 282pp. ISBN 0-7546-3708-5.
African countries have, since independence, remained costly prisoners of foreign development paradigms. If the continent is to achieve sustainable growth then there is a clear need for development strategies that respond to socio economic and political realities. Mr Kalu’s book, Agenda Setting and Public Policy in Africa, provides an integrated account of the theoretical and practical aspects of public policy challenges in developing societies. It points toward the need to infuse ‘novelty’ into public policy making processes to reflect indigenous societal interests. Contributors to the book tackle critical policy issues that have emasculated the growth of policy objectives that are sensitive to African needs. The book demonstrates that the lack of long-term strategic thinking and indigenous African inspiration are some of the factors that have hindered the continents development priorities. The text, made up of a dozen chapters, is the result of collaboration by African scholars who examine some public policy challenges and outline possible alternatives. After the introductory chapter, chapters two to six constitute section one and examine general theoretical and analytical issues in policy making and management in Africa. Chapters seven to 12 (section two) discuss specific country case studies and issues of public policy. In the introduction, the author discusses the link between societal problems and the process of devising public policies that alleviate those problems.
The book’s central theme is that ideas are products of a given context in which the thinker finds him/herself. Such ideas may therefore not necessarily be relevant to dealing with problems in a different environment. The wholesale adoption of Western development paradigms by African countries is a clear -example of -disparities between the contexts. There is a need to anchor development approaches to African settings. It is this line of thought that runs through the entire of the textbook. The African continent continues to grapple with questions about why the continent cannot find solutions to its problems. There has been much rhetoric in the recent past about ‘African solutions to African problems’ but, in reality, the continent persists in relying on Western development strategies and agendas regardless of their relevance. It is essential for African policy makers to prioritize and to focus Africa ’s policy renewal on issues of education, empowerment and capacity-building. Once the majority of the African people have capacity and knowledge, they can participate meaningfully in the process of agenda-setting and public policy. Development processes in Africa should be harnessed to well-planned strategies that integrate relevant ideas with an African vision, knowledge and interests. This is a prudent way to fashion systematic and indigenous approaches to development and growth and a good way to reduce some of the increasingly threatening environmental problems.
Most states in Africa are poor because of institutional inadequacies, most of which were inherited when the states gained independence after a period of colonialism. The quality of life in Africa has, ever since, either improved minimally or not at all. Institutional structures adopted at independence have lacked the capacity to constrain the state and its leadership. This has led to many governments being hamstrung by mismanagement and corruption. The remedy lies in reconstructing the state to provide constitutionally limited forms of government and economic systems that guarantee economic freedoms. In Africa, the process of coalescing issues into the public policy milieu has often been determined by Western states and other international institutions. Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) are a good example of cases where Western economic policies were adopted and which, according to some analysts, perpetuated controlling Western interests in Africa. Dominant political and economic forces in the world have certainly played a central role in influencing policy processes in developing countries. Most international organizations operate in Western capitals and their policies are greatly influenced by those developed countries.
It is also true that most African countries have very weak constitutional frameworks and social movement structures. In the end, a combination of factors makes it very difficult for locally motivated concerns to evolve into public policy; this leaves the agenda setting to be externally determined. It is also plausible to argue that public sector organizations in Africa have contributed to the exacerbation of government inefficiency. Various administrative problems such as bureaucratic inertia and bloated government systems coupled with poor pay compound the problem. These sectors obviously need to be reformed so as to enhance efficiency and accountability. But these reforms need to be secured within the bounds of an African socio-cultural environment.
In recent times, Western states often attached tough conditions to financial support for public service reforms. One such condition is the retrenchment of civil servants without considering the African social context. In Africa, most fa milies still practice the extended family system where individuals end up supporting many of the members of that extended system. Retrenching one person has a big (and negative) snowball effect that should be considered when prescribing reforms. Mr Kalu observes that efficiency and accountability can be made possible by putting in place strategic and professionalized designs. He argues that for Africa to play a meaningful role in the 21 st Century, -governments should aim to reform public institutions through professionalization, decentralization and embracing mechanisms for accountability in order to enhance efficiency and effectiveness and promote development.
The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as an instrument for development is another policy concern for Africa. African states have sought to use ICT to transform its development fortunes but few policy makers have questioned whether ICT (a Western-oriented technology) is a suitable way to meet Africa ’s development needs. African countries should ‘unpack’ this technology and figure out how it can be fashioned to address local peoples’ needs and concerns. The continent should also try to develop and manufacture easily-accessible spare parts for the machines required.
Maternal mortality is another perennial problem in Africa. Most of the social factors that lead to it can easily be overcome. Africa has witnessed widespread maternal deaths resulting from unsafe abortions, inadequate diet, multiple pregnancies and lack of basic health information. African governments need to make their citizens’ health a priority. If governments were able to stem corruption and mismanagement, they could then afford more medical facilities, provide qualified personnel and enhance access to information and awareness of maternal and child healthcare. Another issue involving women is the long-running debate on integrating women into development programmes in Africa. There is no doubt that, in this era, women need to be involved in decision-making processes. Many people in Africa are realizing that women are capable of participating effectively in areas that were traditionally regarded as a male domain. African countries can facilitate inclusive societal development by empowering women and other disadvantaged groups so as to reduce poverty.
Africa governments can also use privatisation programmes as a policy tool. They can stimulate economic growth by revitalizing the public sector, non-profit organizations and the private sector. These are crucial steps toward sustainable development but most African governments have been reluctant to let go of the political and economic systems of patronage that the public sector can provide.
African policy-makers have also had to grapple with the policy of environmental degradation. Economic strategies and public policies play a significant role in the deforestation practice. Economic activities such as timber harvesting and human habitation often take precedence over forest preservation. African countries put institutional structures in place in order to deal with factors such as human demography and socio-economic and -cultural activities. These factors are often responsible for the depletion of forests and environmental degradation.
Non-governmental organisations also have a role to play in policy making in Africa. In fact, the proliferation of NGOs on the continent has not only paved way for increased governmental responsiveness and accountability but has also enhanced civil society’s institutional capacity to intervene between governments and their citizens. Most local NGOs, however, depend on foreign funding to run their operations. Foreign funding institutions sometimes prescribe the particular programmes that they will fund. This restricts the local organisations’ programme choices. Local African NGOs need to overcome their dependency on external donor funding; they need to find innovate ways of generating revenue to pay for their operations. This will help them develop their own original approaches to influencing public policy.
Another contemporary policy concern for Africa, especially after the end of the Cold War, has been the issue of constitutionalism. Participatory approaches to constitution-making and the continuous observance of the constitution can be a good strategy in reconstructing the state and public policy institutions. Participatory constitutionalism helps build strong institutions with new values and establishes relationships that promote democracy, social justice and the rule of law. Constitutionalism can be a very viable way to construct effective public policy. Constitutionalism is, however, a process and not an event. It calls for a lot of political goodwill, especially in Africa where most African leaders are afflicted with the absolute power syndrome.
In a nutshell, Agenda Setting and Public Policy in Africa categorizes Africa ’s problems as follows: the absence of people-driven participatory institutions that should prioritize public policy within an African context. Most authors of the various chapters agree that viable alternatives will involve sound discussions of ideas and an appreciation of issues and goals based on a vision that is informed by, and relevant to the specific African environment. The text provides an up to date account of public policy issues through provoking chapters that are carefully edited. The book’s discussion on contemporary topics of public policy presents good material on theory and current research. The case studies highlight the problems and show possible remedies. The underlying principles are well though out and demonstrate the need for caution when formulating government development strategies and agendas in dynamic and complex settings. This reviewer would have liked the case studies to be more widely distributed in order to capture the breadth and width of the continent’s diversity. Several authors tended to focus on one country, thereby failing to show the broader picture of Africa as suggested in the title. But, on the whole, the authors bring together quite interesting and insightful accounts with concise and accurate summaries. The chapters need not be read in sequence in order to be understood. This is a very important book not only for what it tells readers but because it can also be used as a relevant model for guiding the actual agenda setting and policy making by African governments. It is a careful and knowledgeable exploration of the field of public policy that can be recommended to policy-makers and scholars of public policy.
Kisiangani Emmanuel N
THE SECURITY INTERSECTION
The paradox of power in
the age of terror
Greg Mills
Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2005, pp 321
While it is patently clear that the September 11 terrorist attacks on targets in America – and the US-led toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq two years later – have emphatically changed the face of global security, the emerging security trends generated by these events are less clear. The spread of terrorist attacks – in Madrid, Bali, and on targets in East Africa – as well as insurgency and counter-insurgency in Iraq call for a fundamental rethinking of approaches to security and terrorism in a largely globalised world. Greg Mills’ Security intersection is a lucid analysis of the security challenges of our turbulent age, based on the author’s manifestly extensive and first-hand research in war zones from Iraq to Pakistan.
The book – organised around three sections and nine chapters with a usefully nuanced introduction, a conclusion and valuable endnote – explores three broad issues: the socio-political, economic and cultural backdrop to understanding modern insecurities; usefulness of military means in addressing these challenges with special focus on Afghanistan and Iraq; and suggestions on how best to address some of the key security challenges.
Although Security intersection draws examples from a wide range of issues from across the world, it is primarily concerned with the recent war in Iraq, the on-going insurgency and operations. Greg Mills fuses the anecdotal and the theoretical with incredible ease, and provides a sharp bird’s-eye-view of the global security situation. Security intersection identifies seven ‘paradoxes of power’ generated by the US-led intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq that have become the indelible marks of our turbulent age.
The first paradox is the conflict between military might (‘hard power’) and the ‘soft power’ through which lives, thoughts and actions are shaped and organised. Nothing elucidates this better than the contrast between the quick initial victory by the US-led coalition over Iraq and the complex post-war reconstruction of the country, which vividly delineates the limit of ‘hard-power.’ The second is that the post-9/11 has been characterised by states acting -unilaterally or through ‘coalitions of the willing’ in contrast to the idealistic desire to make the world a better place. The post-9/11 years have seen the rapid rise of American unilateralism in global politics. The third paradox is the existence of international norms, standards and laws governing state behavior which contrast sharply with the apparently inalienable right by states to assert their power internationally, and the ubiquity of social movements and civic groups acting nationally and trans-nationally to assert the rights of citizens.
The fourth paradox is the contrast between the existence of global norms and values and limited and selective interventions to uphold them. The author is concerned because ‘Saddam Hussein was toppled because of his human rights record and the threat his regime offered principally to its own citizens’ but he wonders why ‘Robert Mugabe’s regime [should] remain largely untouched, given the clear and present danger it poses to Zimbabweans and the Southern African region’. It would appear that violation of human rights per se is not sufficient to get states with military might to intervene in other states. As one Zimbabwean aptly remarked, ‘If we had oil deposits and the country was within the orbit of terrorism, Mugabe’s regime would by now be history.’
The fifth paradox is that while the kind of challenges faced in situations after intervention such as post-Taliban Afghanistan and post-Saddam Iraq are better handled by the UN as an inter-state organisation with best practice and best equipped to deal with them, the UN has remained politically powerless and without the requisite resource capacity. Without the UN lead, the peace support operations for post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq have metamorphosed into dangerous counter-insurgency or counter-terrorist campaigns.
The sixth paradox is that while transnational threats, especially the threat of terrorism, have appeared to militate against geographic interventions, this contradicts conventional notions of sovereign control as well as the UN’s -upholding of these principles. Finally, although threats are asymmetrical and marked by irrational behavior, states are expected to respond rationally. Speaking of rationality and rational choices, while toppling Saddam Hussein had its merits, one cannot agree more with Greg Mills that ‘the Bush administration has had an extra-ordinarily polarizing and costly effect on both (US) nationals and global politics’ (p 8). Despite its overwhelming military might, the US finds it difficult to deal with terrorism by relying on conventional power.
While the scope of the book is larger than Africa, it sheds light on the security scenario in African security, likening it to what is going on in hotspots in the Middle East in the global context. The author makes the poignant point that African security often comes as an appendage to what is taking place in such high-profile areas as the Middle East or areas connected to it. It is a sad indication of Africa ’s marginality in the global security debate that events such as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda are yet to become watershed. Although Africa has been faced with many devastating ‘internal’ ‘small’ wars, these have not had any significant impact outside Africa. The developed world spent the better part of 2004 pondering on how to deal with the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in Darfur, but Africa has few results to show for it. Perhaps the book should have contextualised the lead role of the AU in Darfur and what it signifies. Is it abandonment or partnership? Or is it the best expression of ‘African problem to African -solutions’. Whatever Darfur may eventually become, support from the wealthy nations has been too little, too late. Nothing proves the point of selective humanitarian intervention than the overwhelming response by these nations to the victims of the Tsunami disaster that struck many parts of the East Asian Indian Ocean seaboard on 26 December 2004.
The book shares the widespread -scepticism about African peace initiatives on the continent. Commenting on the Somali peace process the author laments that ‘the objective of appointing 275 new members of Parliament, inaugurating a new Somali government and selecting a new Somali president appeared illusionary in the face of an oft-violated ceasefire’ (p 222). Contrary to this view, Somalia is evolving into one of Africa ’s success stories following the signing of a peace agreement in Nairobi last year, which seems to have put the war-torn country firmly on the road to stability and recovery with the support of regional actors such as IGAD and the AU as well as the international community.
Security intersection presents a clear and realistic analysis of the policy-making environment and requirements and options and offers thought-provoking suggestions for future policy. It is a valuable resource and refreshingly rewarding reading.
