Correctional Services Minister Sibusiso Ndebele will depart from Sao Paulo for Havana City in Cuba today (Sunday, 30 September), where he will be hosted by the Cuban Ministry of the Interior on work exchanges with the Directorate: Penitentiary Establishments.
Issues to be discussed include organisational, legal, judicial foundations and good practices of the Cuban correctional system, rehabilitation and social reintegration of their prison population as well as their prison health and education system.
On Friday (28 September), Minister Ndebele met with Consul General Mmaikeletsi Dube, and senior officials, at the offices of the South African Consulate General in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Minister was briefed on bilateral relations in the correctional sector between South Africa and Brazil, particularly the increase in the number of South Africans being arrested, and imprisoned, for drug-related crimes in Brazil.
Brazil has committed to forging closer ties with South Africa on correctional matters, and a high-level technical team has been invited back to Brazil to take matters emanating from Minister Ndebele’s visit forward.
The Minister, supported by Correctional Services National Commissioner Mr. Tom Moyane, is currently on a study tour to Brazil, Cuba and New York to study, and observe, various issues pertaining to the correctional services portfolio that will provide a broad understanding of conceptual and organizational operations of the prison service resulting in the consolidation of best-practice models for South Africa.
On 26 September, Minister Ndebele held a meeting with the Director-General, Dr. Augusto Eduardo de Souza Rossini, and senior officials of the national Penitentiary Department at the Office of the Ministry of Justice in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. The main focus of the meeting was their “Absolution of Time Through Reading” and “Absolution of Time Through Labour” programmes.
In Brazil, prisons are offering an interesting option to select prisoners: read and write essays on works of literature, philosophy and science to reduce sentences by four days for every book completed. Prisoners have one month to read each book and write book reports that must “make use of paragraphs, be free of corrections, use margins and legible joined-up writing”.
The programme allows avid readers to shave up to 48 days off their sentence every year. Statistics, and analysis, show some strong links between literacy and crime levels. Brazil, with 514,582 inmates, currently ranks fourth in the world in terms of inmate population. The cost per inmate is approximately one thousand US dollars per month. In terms of education for inmates, Brazil is investing three hundred million US dollars from 2012 to 2014.
There is a partnership between the Ministry of Justice, under which the Correctional Services portfolio (Penitentiary Department) falls, and the Ministries of Education and Health with regards to the implementation of a national Education and Health plan for inmates. Brazil also has 1,050 Community Councils, in various states, which play a key role in the integration of offenders into society.
On 25 September, Minister Ndebele met with Ambassador Mphakama Mbete, and senior officials, at the South African Embassy: Brazil where the Minister was briefed on bilateral relations between South Africa and Brazil.
Enquiries:
Logan Maistry
Cell: 083 6444 050
Correctional Services Minister Sibusiso Ndebele on work exchange in Cuba
