Issued by African National Congress - Parliament
30 May 2003
Madam Speaker
Honourable Minister, Mr. Ben Skosana
Honourable Ministers
Honourable Members
Ladies and Gentlemen
Prisoner and prison populations of the past decades result from conscious decisions by lawmakers in response to pursuing crime- preventative effects. The validity of those decisions is the fundamental question to be answered about the wisdom of modern penal policies.
People are sent to prison partly because of moral ideas about what constitutes just and deserved punishments: "you reap what you sow". Sending people to prison enhances public safety. The belief is that imprisonment is effective because it incapacitates offenders, rehabilitates them, deters them and others, and reinforces basic social norms about right and wrong.
Perhaps, a more constructive argument around the effects of imprisonment can be elaborated on by asking ourselves 6 pertinent questions:
Research on the effects of imprisonment suggests that policy - makers, while intending to enhance public safety, regrettably but understandably, pursue a single-minded concern of crime reduction through deterrent and incapacitative effects of increased imprisonment.
In attempting to seek solutions, one can ask, has increased use of imprisonment reduced crime rates through deterrence and incapacitation?
The answer is a resounding "NO".
Currently, The Department of Correctional Services is encountering an alarming 60% of overcrowding within South African prisons, of which, 31% are awaiting trial and pre-sentence offenders.
Can prisons deliver treatment programmes that will enhance public safety by reducing prisoners' recidivism rates? While one can be cautiously optimistic about possible positive effects, there are conditions under which reduction of repeat offending may be reduced. These conditions though, are dependent upon programme eligibility which needs to match the prisoners' needs and risks, programmes need to be well implemented and adequately funded, and compatible after-care programmes in the community must be able to sustain treatment.
A promising output here by the Department is that the budget for rehabilitation increases by an average of 8,3% per annum from R264,8 million in 1999/2000 to R427,5 million in 2005/2006. This reflects the Department's new focus, of putting rehabilitation at the centre of its activities by shifting funds from all other programmes to the rehabilitation of prisoners and their re-integration into the community.
In cost-benefit terms, is increased imprisonment worth it?
Our society takes into account, on some level, the costs of "victim pain and suffering", but takes no account of suffering and pain of imprisonment borne by the offender's partner, children or community. Perhaps, efforts to compare the cost and benefits of alternative crime prevention policies may offer more promise.
As mentioned earlier, the Department of Correctional Services has as one of its key goals, the placing of rehabilitation at the centre of all its activities in partnerships with external stakeholders. One of the ways in which it seeks to do this, is by progressive and ethical management and staff practices within which every correctional official performs an effective correcting and encouraging role.
It is common knowledge that prison staff need systematic knowledge if they are effectively, ethically and sensitively able to do their jobs.
The Department of Correctional Services has thus embarked upon orientation and training programmes of all Departmental employees to a corrections approach. The challenges faced by the correctional staff are indeed critical and taxing challenges such as, growing privatisation of institutional corrections, rapid expansion in the numbers prisons, prison staff and prisoners, dealing with more sophisticated drug use patterns within prison, gang cultures and new policies.
Consequently, correctional officials have often displayed high levels of stress. The job of a correctional official is not an enviable one, and for those of us on the outside looking in, we need to acknowledge that those committed officials deserve our gratitude and encouragement.
Just as there are those dedicated and committed individuals, there are also those who openly flout the rules of law and engage in corrupt activities. Much has been reported on the level of corruption uncovered by the Jali Commission. Both, The President and the Honourable Minister, Mr. Ben Skosana, are to be commended for their pursuance of transparency and accountability by appointing the Jali Commission to investigate corruption and irregularities within our prison system.
The Department has already begun with the implementation of the Commission's recommendations. DCS has committed itself to keeping government appraised of the developments of the work of the Jali Commission through the brelevant structures and will ensure that the South African public is kept informed of all developments.
The Department also has a three- pronged Anti-Corruption Strategy to investigate mismanagement within the Department. Together with the Judicial Inspectorate, whose mandate is dealing with prisoner complaints and devising further strategies to reduce overcrowding, the Department appears quite determined to create a culture of good governance.
The Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services and the Select Committee on Security and Constitutional Affairs can assure the Department and the Honourable Minister, that we would offer all support, assistance and guidance in tackling the challenges that DCS currently faces.
We acknowledge that the current White Paper on Correctional Services is inadequate and fails to decisively address the central problems of the correctional system in South Africa. A welcome solution to this, is the formation of a task team to work towards the development of a Green Paper. Relevant policy components to be included here such as the rehabilitation policy, unit management policy, policy on aged prisoners, gender policy and youth policy amongst others, ensures that a single, coherent policy document may be achieved.
Having said this, Madame Speaker, allow me to vehemently state that Correctional Services is but one department within the peace and security cluster, and that correctional or penal reform is an all embracing and consultative process. Our present criminal justice process encompasses four core departments, namely, Correctional Services, The South African Police Service, Welfare and Justice, with Correctional Services not merely being the "last outpost" for criminal justice, but rather very much a part of it.
We all need to be aware that penal reform cannot proceed without changes to the criminal justice system as a whole, and that crime prevention in and by civil society, is essential to the success of penal reform.
There needs to be a determination to make sure that everyone, especially the poor and marginalized has equal access to the justice system;
Most importantly, there needs to be the insistence that imprisonment should be used by courts as an exception rather than a first option, and that we cultivate a non-elitist criminal justice system which treats all people equally.
In acknowledgement and reception of that assertion, in the recent past, during the Constituency period, the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services and some members of the Portfolio Committee on Safety and Security spent two weeks visiting areas, centers and institutions of the Criminal Justice System. We visited the courts; the prisons; Police stations, Detective Units, Forensic Units; we visited the Legal aid board, the institutions of Social Welfare development relevant to our work, we also met the Prosecuting Authority.
This cluster's oversight work by parliamentary Committees was conducted by three delegations in Kwazulu- Natal, the Gauteng and Eastern Cape Province.
I wish to thank all the members of parliament who participated in this venture, and may I say thank you to Hon. Johnny De Lange and Hon Llewelyn Landers.
A report of our study groups will soon find it's way to this August House.
Preliminarily, I am able to report that it was most rewarding to see the Criminal Justice System in action.
By the time we left the Provinces it was clear to those men and women who lead the criminal Justice System at that level that the system have to speak to each other.
When the systems fail to co-operate and communicate no single component will prosper.
Some of the challenges we observed are the following:
May I also recommend that at Provincial and Regional levels it will be appropriate to establish co-coordinating forums of the Criminal Justice System. The purpose of these forums should be created to do the following:
As we discuss Correctional Services in the context of the Criminal Justice cluster let me proceed to make further recommendations:
Honourable members, the biggest challenge that our nation faces is to reconcile with the fact that offenders are human; that offenders are sons and daughters, that we have the responsibility to make certain that when they leave our jails they don't come back.
Further recommendations are suggested to consider more traditional alternatives to custody in order to deal with the widespread prison overcrowding:
Madame Speaker, it is obvious by now that the dimensions of a proper penal policy depend on an intricate blend of value judgements and empirical information. Most importantly, the penal policy adopted by a society is perhaps the most telling indication of the integrity of a society itself. A prominent researcher once noted that " it should be the objective of civilised and progressive society to devise methods of punishment which do not deny the human qualities of the offender, because a denial of his humanity draws with it a denial of society itself.
I thank you.