Antony Altbeker

Since the democratic elections in 1994, Antony Altbeker has worked for a range of government institutions and policy think tanks on issues relating to crime and policing. Between 1994 and 1998, he worked for the Minister for Safety and Security, after which he spent three years at the National Treasury where he was responsible for planning for the budgetary needs of the criminal justice system.

Since 2001, he has worked as a lecturer in public policy at a graduate school of the University of the Witwatersrand, has been a researcher at two NGOs (the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and the Institute for Security Studies), and as an independent consultant. In that time, he authored a large number of articles and book chapters in academic and non-academic publications. He is also the author of two books, The Dirty Work of Democracy: A Year on the Streets with the SAPS (which won the 2006 Recht Malan Prize for non-fiction and was short-listed for the Alan Paton Prize) and A Country at War with Itself: South Africa’s Crisis of Crime (published in 2007).

On the basis of this work, Antony is regarded as one of the country’s leading authorities on crime and policing, and he is frequently approached to provide insight ino South Africa’s crime problems to local and international news media.

Antony has an Honours degree in Politics and a Masters in Economics. He lives in Johannesburg with his wife and three children.

Titles

A Country at War with Itself (Jonathan Ball, 2007)

The Dirty Work of Democracy (Jonathan Ball, 2005)

Justice Through Specialisation? (Institute for Security Studies, 2003)