BC 997 JUSTICE JH STEYN CORRESPONDENCE

Manuscripts & Archives

University of Cape Town Libraries

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Justice JH (Jan) Steyn was born in 1928.  He attended Jan van Riebeeck High School in Cape Town, and later obtained a LlB from Stellenbosch University.  He was appointed a Supreme Court Judge in 1964.  His great interest was in Criminology, in the prevention of crime and the rehabilitation of offenders.  He was deeply involved in the work of the Social Services Association of South Africa, later to become NICRO.

He was joint author, with James Midgley and Roland Graser, of Crime and Punishment in South Africa, and was principal founder of the Institute of Criminology at UCT on 1 March 1977.  He served as chairman of the Media Council, and later made a great contribution to the upliftment of Black communities in his capacity as chairman of the Urban Foundation.

He was appointed first chairman of the newly-created R2 billion Independent Development Trust established by the State President in 1990.

THE COLLECTION

Justice JH Steyn donated journals, pamphlets and other papers to the Institute of Criminology at UCT in 1990.  The unpublished material was passed on to the Manuscripts Department of the University of Cape Town Libraries.  The papers are mainly correspondence in connection with his work in the area of Criminology and, in particular, with NICRO.  There are also some references to his negotiations towards establishing the Institute of Criminology, for which he was mainly responsible.

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