The two have been working on a project, Heymann says, concerning how the police--which in the past have had a nototious record of brutality and secrecy--would have to change in a South Africa with a Black majority.

In early June, the center held in Petersburg a conference attended by the South African police and the African National Congress (ANC), as well as other conflicting political parties. British officials and New York City Police Commissioner Lee Brown also attended the conference, Heymann says.

At the conference, Heymann says, the ANC and other parties complained that the police often terrorize their members. Meanwhile, the police discussed the dangers involved in patrolling some of the cities, Heymann says.

"Police are frightened to go into cities, and they should be, because there is near warfare in many of the Black townships," Heymann says.

Another problem taken up at the conference was that of South Africa's prosecutors, which have in the past claimed a narrow sphere of responsibilities, Heymann says.

The prosecution felt "no need or right to challenge police on moral or legal grounds," Heymann says. "Their tradition had been to represent the police in court in criminal cases."

After the conference, representatives divided into smaller working groups, which are currently working on proposals regarding Black representation on the country's police force as well as checks on its power.

Representatives of the groups will discuss such proposals at a conference in Cambridge in the spring. The larger conference will then reconvene in South Africa next summer for final debate on issues of the police, the prosecuting process and the public defense system.

Empowering the Prosecution

Colombia has been beleaguered in the past with narcotics trafficking, right-wing vigilantism and left-wing terrorism, Heymann says, but the country is now looking to make changes in its criminal prosecution system.

Officials from the Colombian Ministry of Justice recently solicited the center's assistance in restructuring that nation's justice system. Heymann says that the center's international projects are usually initiated when a foreign government contacts the center.

Heymann says most Latin American countries are hampered by having few or no prosecutors, leaving a system in which police "often take matters into their own hands."

"If a criminal justice system cannot handle ordinary crime, there is very frequently a call to have generals handle it instead," Heymann says. "And police have a tendency to execute and punish on their own."

As a result, McGillis says, many crimes are either undetected or neglected. "A lot of these South American systems have only judges," he says. "This creates a situation where no one is really pursuing the cases."

Presently associates of the center are working in Colombia with a team of that country's academics, experts and government officials to develop blueprints for a new and improved prosecution system.