Programme Director
Deputy Minister of Correctional Services: Adv. Ngoako Ramathlodi
Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services: Mr. Vincent Smith
Members of the Correctional Services Portfolio Committee
National Commissioner: Mr. Tom Moyane
Chairperson of the National Council on Correctional Services: Judge Siraj Desai
Other Judges, Magistrates and Members of the Judiciary
Chief Deputy Commissioners and Regional Commissioners
Members of the Parole Boards
Representatives from JCPS Cluster Departments
All other representatives of government and civil society
Members of the Media
Distinguished Guests
Good morning to you all. At the outset, let me take this opportunity to convey our appreciation to the 171 representatives, from various organisations, present here today for making the time to attend this all important colloquium to discuss overcrowding in our correctional centres, alternative sentencing as well as remand detention management in South Africa. The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) is hosting this colloquium as part of finding solutions to South Africa’s high rate of incarceration and breaking the cycle of crime.
Overcrowding is, perhaps, the single most pressing concern facing correctional services around the world. The World Prison Brief currently places South Africa in the top ten in terms of our inmate population. South Africa has 51,8 million citizens, and our rate of imprisonment is the highest in Africa. Nigeria, the continent's most densely populated country with 166,3 million people, has 51,560 inmates with 31 inmates for every 100,000 of its people. The national populations of the top six countries on the list range from 78-million in Iran to 1,3-billion people in China - with a combined total of more than 3-billion people.
South Africa sits at number nine worldwide with 310 inmates for every 100,000 of its people. Of this, approximately 70% are sentenced offenders and approximately 30% are remand detainees. The population of offenders serving longer than 15 years (including life sentences) increased by 492% over the past two decades, from 4,995 during 1994/95 to 29,575 during 2010/11.
The Freedom Charter states that imprisonment shall be only for serious crimes against the people, and shall aim at re-education, not vengeance. Section 35(2) (e) of the Bill of Rights states that offenders have the right “to conditions of detention that are consistent with human dignity, including at least exercise and the provision, at state expense, of adequate accommodation, nutrition, reading material and medical treatment”.
The White Paper on Corrections in South Africa represents the final fundamental break with a past archaic penal system, and ushers in a start to our second decade of freedom where prisons become correctional centres of rehabilitation and offenders are given new hope and encouragement to adopt a lifestyle that will result in a second chance towards becoming the ideal South African citizen.
In 1984, the driver of overcrowding in our country, (according to the Judicial Inquiry into the structure and functioning of the courts), was the incarceration of prisoners as a result of influx control measures. In 1985, the key driver was the mass detention of political prisoners as a result of the State of Emergency. From 1995 to 2004, the prison population increased from an annual average of 111,090 to an annual average of 186,467 in 2004. In the same period, the bed space gradually increased from 95,002 to 114,097 which translates to occupancy of 163.43% in 2004. On 31 October 2012, the total inmate population was 149,959 and the approved bed space was 118,968 which translates to occupancy of 126,05%.
Overcrowding can, therefore, be the consequence of lack of adequate correctional facilities’ infrastructure, or a result of over use of imprisonment in the penal system. Over use of imprisonment includes indiscriminate, and even uncalculated, use of pre-trial detention. In other words, in order to determine the causes we need to analyse those offenders coming into our correctional facilities, and the reasons therefore, as well as how long they stay and barriers to release.
To address overcrowding, the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) is implementing a multi-pronged strategy including the following:
- Managing levels of Remand Detainees (RD’s) through the Integrated Justice System and its Development Committee, as well as various specialised sub-committees, including the Inter-Sectoral Committee on Child Justice.
- Managing levels of sentenced inmates through improving effective, and appropriate, use of conversion of sentence to community correctional supervision, release on parole, and transfers between correctional centres to attempt to establish some degree of evenness of overcrowding.
- Ensuring progress with Department of Correctional Services capital works programme to upgrade correctional facilities, and to build new correctional centres that are both cost effective and rehabilitation oriented.
- Encouraging debate in South Africa about reasons for incarceration as a sentence, and encouraging an approach to appropriate sentencing focused on facilitating rehabilitation.
- Enhancing community correctional supervision, so that it can be better utilised as an appropriate sentence for less serious crimes.
- Improving correction, and development programmes, within the Department of Correctional Services, to ensure enhanced facilitation of rehabilitation that targets offending behaviour.
- Encouraging improvement of first, and second, levels of correction in the form of the family and social institutions, as economic sector and government departments respectively, to decrease rate of entry into the criminal justice system – including improvements in service delivery levels, and
- Encouraging community involvement in social reintegration of offenders back into their community, in order to assist in reducing levels of repeat offending.
The Correctional Services Act, 1998, was recently amended to allow offenders:
- with sentences up to 24 months to be considered for possible parole on one quarter (against previous one half) of their sentences, and
- who were sentenced in terms of the minimum sentencing legislation to be considered for possible parole after one half (against previous 4/5) of their sentences.
The effect of these amendments will be a decrease in the minimum length of time that such offenders must spend in correctional centres, prior to being eligible for parole.
As a result of having implemented a multi- pronged overcrowding strategy, working in collaboration with criminal justice partners to improve diversion options and providing additional bed spaces, the Department of Correctional Services managed to further decrease the overcrowding rate of 37.91% during 2007/08 to 34.39% during 2011/12.
It is accepted world-wide that 95% of all inmates, who are our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, will ultimately return to their communities at some point. Therefore, conviction and sentencing can no longer be meted in isolation from eventual reintegration.
In the United States, the Second Chance Act was signed into law on 9 April 2008. Federal and state corrections facilities held over 1.6 million prisoners at the end of 2010.This amounts to one in every 201 U.S. residents. More than 700,000 individuals were released from state and federal prisons in 2010, an increase of 20% from 2000. More than four in 10 offenders returned to state prison within three years of their release.The Second Chance Act provides a number of grants, over a two year period, to state and local governments in order to:
• promote the safe, and successful, reintegration of offenders into the community upon their release;
• provide employment services, substance abuse treatment, housing, family programming, mentoring, victim services, and methods to improve release and revocation;
• provide mentoring services to adult and juvenile offenders;
• implement family-based treatment programmes for incarcerated parents who have minor children;
• provide guidance to the Bureau of Prisons for enhanced re-entry planning procedures;
• provide information on health, employment, personal finance, release requirements and community resources.
DCS remains fully committed to a caring and just society, enjoining all of us to afford those who err against society the opportunity to correct their ways under humane conditions.
We are going all out to rehabilitate those seeking opportunities for change in their lives. We are passionate about galvanising understanding for our transformative agenda from prisons to corrections, and preparing offenders to be reintegrated as functional members of society. Corrections is an integral part of the Integrated Criminal Justice System, and the value chain in the fight against crime and criminality. We have moved away from the legacy of the past of serving solely as an instrument of retribution to actively pursuing lasting solutions to the societal challenge that is crime by showing those in conflict with the law that there are alternatives to a life of criminality and self-destruction.
South Africa was recently elected Chair of the African Correctional Services Association (ACSA). We will use our position in ACSA to enhance correctional services on the continent, including persisting with the movement to reform prisons systems by reducing prison populations and promoting rehabilitation.
Last month, supported by the National Commissioner, we undertook 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 organisational, operations of the prison service resulting in the consolidation of best-practice models for South Africa. On 5 October 2012, as part of a study tour to Brazil, Cuba and New York, we visited the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York. More than 50% of those incarcerated at Sing Sing, one of the oldest correctional centres in the world, are Black males.
Yet, Black people constitute approximately 13% of the total population in the US. It was, indeed, worrying to learn that South Africa ranks 5th in terms of the number of foreigners jailed in Brazil. The majority of those incarcerated were convicted for drug-related crimes. Almost half of South African drug mules and drug traffickers in foreign jails are in South America. In Sao Paulo and Rio alone, 125 South Africans are incarcerated. Of these 57 men and 68 women, 77% of the males are White and 65% of the females are Black.
Both the youngest and eldest inmates are females, with the youngest being 20 years of age and the oldest 74.
As part of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) countries, which account for almost half of the total population of the world, we are more determined to fight this drug scourge. Drugs pose a serious challenge, but also a major opportunity where families and communities must unite. Drugs cut across both race and class – it affects both rich and poor. Your daughter or son could be next. We are calling upon everyone (parents, educators, religious leaders) to start learning, observing and recognising drugs and their signs. Observing your child when she is on trial, sentenced or serving time in a correctional centre is too late. Together, we fought against apartheid and defeated it. Together, we are fighting against all forms of intolerance. A new scourge is upon us, the scourge of drugs. Let us unite and fight it in our families, communities, schools, churches, mosques, temples, everywhere.
In a further effort to increase successful rehabilitation by removing the narrow focus on the offender only, we are also embarking on Victim-Offender Dialogues. The main thrust of this programme is to contribute to a safer South Africa, through promoting family unity and stronger community systems, as well as victim support and empowerment, while pursuing the rehabilitation of those incarcerated through well-managed rehabilitation programmes. We must ensure that rehabilitation programmes impact the hearts, heads and hands of offenders. We want to create opportunities where various stakeholders defined as victims of crime, those affected personally, their families, communities, community-based organisations, non-governmental organisations, religious and spiritual bodies, educators, councillors and local leaders, will assemble together with offenders with a single purpose to rebuild our communities ravaged by crime.
We want to reinforce corrections programmes through music, reading for redemption, creative literature, the arts, cultural events, heritage renewal events, sporting events, formal education and acquisition of skills, economic renewal through cooperatives and enterprise development, spiritual growth and self-correcting interventions, among others. The trilogy of victim, offender and community must play a leading role in the implementation of the Victim-Offender Dialogues. Key to rehabilitation is empowering offenders with skills to function effectively in society upon their release but, equally important, is to ensure that offenders are actively involved in productive activity while they serve their sentences.
Therefore, the establishment of a trading entity is being prioritised which will impact positively on utilisation of offender labour. Through this trading entity, we can offer our customer base consisting of government, NGO’s and the private sector a wide variety of products and services, ranging from furniture, clothing, steel works, food products, agriculture and many others. In addition, we will continue to donate these products to disadvantaged communities from time to time to help alleviate poverty. We are also currently in discussions with the Department of Basic Education to use offender labour to build schools, and also supply furniture to schools. This is in addition to what is already being produced in correctional facilities.
For example, from April 2011 to March 2012, inmates at correctional centre farms and abattoirs produced more than 6,3 million litres of milk (6,347,395 litres), 583,000 kilograms of red meat (583,723kg), 1,7 million kilograms of pork (1,740,243kg), 1,1 million kilograms of chicken (1,181,760kg), 1,5 million dozen of eggs (1,547,534 dozen), 9 million kilograms of vegetables (9,091,151kg) and 652,000 kilograms of fruit (652,131kg).
The department has already proven that it is capable of producing pockets of excellence. During August 2012, the Department of Correctional Services in Gauteng once again emerged a winner at the 2012 Nama Phepa Awards. The Department’s abattoir at Leeuwkop Correctional Facility in Johannesburg was declared the best in the province for three successive years in the category of Low Red Meat Abattoir, winning the gold award. The awards are aimed at ensuring that meat from Gauteng meets the highest standards of hygiene.
On 2 November 2012, the Brandvlei Youth Correctional Centre, in the Western Cape, was awarded second place at the finals of the 2012 Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) Annual Public Sector Innovation Awards. The centre’s radio project, that seeks to build life and technical skills of offenders, was a finalist in the Innovative use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) for effective service delivery category. The project, dubbed Basic Radio, competed with 11 other government departments.
The goal of this needs-based rehabilitation, a partnership between the University of Cape Town and DCS, is to influence offenders positively to adopt ideal norms and values and to also develop life, social and labour-related skills. Educational programmes in the form of health, offender, gender and HIV and Aids topics make up 30% of the programming, and news and actuality 10%. In terms of innovation, the project aims to provide offenders the opportunity to alter the way in which they perceive themselves and the world around them, and allow them to express themselves and accept themselves as well as others. It allows them to find their place and develop self-esteem and pride.
During the past six years, Correctional Centre Schools such as Usethubeni Youth School at Westville in Durban have been achieving an above 90% average matric pass rate. Currently, 1,873 offenders are studying towards their Grade 12/Matric. Nine hundred and ninety one (991) offenders are studying towards post-matric/higher education and training qualifications, 4,042 towards further education and training (FET) college programmes (including electrical engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and marketing) and 3,853 towards skills development programmes (including basic business skills training and entrepreneurship).
From next year (2013), it will be compulsory for every inmate to complete Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) level 1 to 4. Government spends approximately R7 000 per month on each inmate, and we will be falling in our duty if we cannot make sure that offenders return to society with at least a skill in one hand and a certificate in the other. As we enter 2013, all South Africans, government and civil society must work together towards the social reconstruction of society and regeneration of morals and values.
It is widely recognised that the solution to overcrowding does not reside solely with the Department of Correctional Services. This is particularly the case with the 30% of remand detainees within our facilities. A JCPS Cluster Overcrowding Task Team was established to identify blockages that result in overcrowding. The work of this team has been taken over by the Integrated Justice System Development Committee, and its substructures, including the Case Management Task Team and the Inter-sectoral Committee on Child Justice.
These structures focus on blockages within the system, and attend to issues such as the reduction of the average length of detention. Case flow structures both at national and local level, chaired by magistrates, attempt to identify reasons for lengthy detention of remand detainees and to address those reasons. To improve effectiveness and ensure integration of the criminal justice system, the average length of time in remand detention has been set as key performance area for the JCPS cluster.
The Correctional Matters Amendment Act (CMAA) (Act 5 of 2011) provided a framework, for the first time, in the effective management of Remand Detainees (RD) in South Africa, addressing, in particular, the length of detention in police cells and in correctional facilities. As at 1 November 2012, there were 45,180 remand detainees and 150,017 sentenced offenders. DCS has decided to develop a nation-wide system solution, which will allow each centre, as well as the regions and nationally, to accurately calculate the length of detention of each Remand Detainee. The development of this system will ensure that the section can be fully implemented, and it is anticipated to be rolled out in the last quarter of the current financial year (2012/13). At this point, it will be then possible to determine the baseline scientifically in line with clearly defined parameters. There are 26 gazetted Remand Detention Facilities in the country.
The Correctional Matters Amendment Act stipulates in Section 49G: “The period of incarceration of a Remand Detainee must not exceed two years from the initial date of admission into the Remand Detention Facility, without such matter having been brought to the attention of the Court concerned in the manner set out in this section.“
Section35 (3) of the Constitution states: “every accused person has a right to a fair trial, which includes the right (d) to have their trial begin and conclude without unreasonable delay.”
Additional sections of the Amendment Act were created to ensure that those within our centres who are seriously ill, or incapacitated, are more appropriately cared for.
Section 49E creates a responsibility for DCS officials to refer a remand detainee to court for consideration of a more appropriate placement, such as in hospitals, hospices or with their families. This section is set for implementation on 1 December 2012.
Once sentenced, and in order to relieve the burden on correctional services, there is a need to consider Non-Custodial Alternative Sentencing for first minor offenders. The option of alternative Non-Custodial Sentencing will assist in relieving the challenge on overcrowding and other accompanied ills. It is also cost effective, and bestows the responsibility of rehabilitation, and reintegration, upon the community and its stakeholders.
The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for Non-Custodial Measures (The Tokyo Rules) prescribe the basic principles to promote the use of Non-Custodial measures, and the minimum safeguards, for persons subject to alternatives to imprisonment. The rule is aimed at promoting greater community involvement in managing criminal justice in relation to the treatment of offenders, and to promote a sense of responsibility towards society.
In conclusion, I am convinced that our deliberations, today and tomorrow, will bear fruit for future action, and improvements, in our correctional system. Let’s continue this dialogue towards finding solutions to South Africa’s high rate of incarceration and breaking the cycle of crime.
Working Together, We Can Do More!
Thank you.
