SA prison stats 'a disgrace'

2003-10-01 15:23

Cape Town - It was a disgrace that four out of every 1 000 South Africans were in jail, delegates to a Nicro symposium on rehabilitation of offenders were told on Wednesday.

Khanya Mpuang, rehabilitation specialist at the National Institute for Crime Prevention and Reintegration of Offenders (Nicro) said offender reintegration was vital to reducing crime in South Africa.

She said the department of correctional services planned to build more prisons, but that this should not be considered as a workable long-term solution to overcrowding.

In 2002 the department estimated that if current trends continued there would be 250 000 prisoners by 2006.

"We cannot have a situation where there are more prisons in South Africa than there are, for example, hospitals or schools," she said.

"For South Africa to be amongst the highest in terms of numbers of incarceration, four out of every 1 000 citizens, is disgraceful, especially because South Africa has one of the best democracies."

Rehabilitation

She commended the department for its commitment to rehabilitation in prisons, but said badly trained staff, corruption and mismanagement within the department, and overcrowding in prisons, made this a difficult task.

Communities, civil society organisations and government departments should work to reduce the number of offenders landing up in prison in the first place.

Correctional Services Minister Ben Skosana told the symposium, held at Langebaan, that overcrowding threatened the implementation of rehabilitation programmes.

He said strategies put in place to reduce overcrowding included bringing the parole dates of certain low-risk prisoners forward, releasing prisoners who were incarcerated because they could not afford minimum bail, reducing unnecessary police arrests, and constructing four "new generation" prison facilities which would each house 3 000 prisoners.

- SAPA