Members of the Media and Executive Management of Correctional Services, special guests and ladies and gentlemen, today we mark the closure of a programme that helps deliver on the core mandate of the Department – Operation Vala.
With this campaign we are contributing to various other campaigns launched by our partners in the Criminal Justice system, like The Duty Calls campaign of the South African Police Service.
The programme was introduced in response to a disturbing pattern of offender perpetrated security breaches during the festive season for a number of years, as they apparently wanted to escape at all costs including leaving some of our officials and also offenders either dead, paralysed or serious injured.
We regard these incidents as militating against our core objectives and values of building an enabling environment for effective rehabilitation, development and social re-integration of offenders. No inmate can effectively study, attend rehabilitation programmes and optimally use numerous rehabilitation interventions we make, if they live in fear and constant threat to their lives.
This 50 day campaign has been running for six years and indeed continues to register the desired effect overall and therefore today marks a celebration of these progressive improvements in ensuring that we provide safer custody and a safer environment for officials, inmates, service providers and our stakeholders.
In short, we are winning the battle against incidents of escape, assaults and unnatural deaths although the levels of these incidents remain unacceptably high when we consider the standards we have set for ourselves of“zero escapes, zero assaults and zero unnatural deaths” in our facilities. We remain also fully conscious of the fact that these are difficult issues to completely manage and stop in any correctional system any where in the world, which by its nature incarcerates those who do not flinch in inflicting any form of injury or pain to society.
I am glad to announce that in terms of a preliminary report I have received, there is significant decline of incidents of escapes, assaults and unnatural deaths since the launch of the festive season security campaign six years ago in 2005. Essentially two escape incidents – in Leeuwkop and another one at Groenpunt. One included a killing of our officials when the offenders was helped to escape by other criminals from a hospital. The others were erroneous releases.The picture is as follows:
- Incidents of escape declined by 90% from 48 in 2005/06 to 5 in 2010/11 financial year;
- Incidents of alleged assault also phenomenally declined by 72% from 622 in 2005/06 to 171 in 2010/11, coming down from 243 last year;
- Incidents of unnatural deaths also declines significantly by 73% from 11 in 2005/06 to 3 in 2010/11 financial year.
As earlier indicated, our major concern remains high levels of assaults particularly by inmates on other inmates as they constitute the biggest percentage of these incidents with 152 of the 172 victims being inmates.
These are good achievements which I believe give us greater drive to double our efforts to build a safer and a more secure correctional system that contributes effectively in making all people in South Africa to be and feel safe.
During the period we conducted hundreds of unannounced day and night raids which netted thousands of illegal items from across the country under the leadership of our Regional Commissioners supported by the Emergency Support Teams (EST) members. These illegal items included: dagga, knives, cellphones, simcards and drugs – and all those found to be involved will go through internal disciplinary processes – including inmates and officials.This year’s campaign focused on “Security : Back to Basics” which entailed:
- Strict adherence to security procedures
- Tightening of supervision of staff and inmates
- Pro-active management of security information
- Consequent and fair handling of complaints and requests of inmates
These achievements could not have been possible without outstanding and dedicated work of our correctional officials, many of whom missed the opportunity to be with their loving families during the festive season, but stayed on to ensure that you and me can enjoy a safer festive season.
We also wish to take our hats off various other players that contributed to the success of this campaign which including:
- Families of inmates that had to endure stricter measures and missed opportunities for providing Christmas meals to the loved ones incarcerated in our facilities during Operation Vala – it is not business as usual.
- The South African Police Service
- Our managers that intensified unannounced visits – Area Commissioners, Regional Commissioners and other managers, to ensure that every aspect of the campaign is done in terms of the basics of security.
We have prioritised security even in our strategic plan and I wish to call upon every player to help us double these achievements going forward, because it is not just a matter of the festive season – but a day to day responsibility of ensuring that all South Africans – including officials, inmates and service providers are and feel safe.
We will undertake one unannounced visit today, the tour will be undertaken together. I trust that everyone of you including the media will ensure that we return to the basics in terms of security while we are undertaking this operation.We will entertain the questions at the end of the tour.
We wish to state that we take our work and our mission very seriously, hence we thought it is crucial to account to the people of South Africa through the media at the end of the festive season security plan.
I thank you
Enquiries:
Manelisi Wolela
Cell: 083 626 0304
