Pretoria — The establishment of an integrated and seamless national Criminal Justice System database has been recommended by the Anti-Crime Forum in a continuing effort to fight crime.

This recommendation was made at the Anti-Crime Leadership Forum's (ACLF) bi-monthly meeting, Thursday.

The forum consists of government and big business leaders with the aim of fighting crime. It is co-chaired by Minister Nqakula and business representative, Derek Cooper.

Representatives from government include all ministers of the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security (JCPS) cluster.

Some of the key activities from businesses and government in the group include crime operations across provinces, establishing operational control centres, improvement of arrest, investigation, prosecution capabilities and processes within government.

The forum also is involved in the development and upgrading of the closed circuit television systems to support crime prevention, law enforcement, and prosecution as well as designing and implementing cash management standards and enhancing information gathering and sharing within the business sector themselves and also with government.

The recommendation made by one of the forum's working groups tasked with improving the criminal justice system could see the country's Criminal Justice System (CJS) database containing all the information relevant for effective management of the system.

The information will be owned and authenticated by individual departments and agencies.

The forum also called for the legislative establishment of coordinating and management structures for the CJS, at both national and provincial levels.

Calls were made for the adoption of a single vision and mission statement including a single set of objectives for the Justice Crime and Prevention Security (JCPS) cluster to effectively improve alignment of all operations.

The forum's meeting further urged for the implementation of proposals in priority areas with significant positive impacts on court processes inter alia, improved delivery capacity of SAPS detective services, forensic, crime scene management, prosecution and correctional services to provide an effective, appropriate, people-centred, and modernised CJS.

All of these recommendations will be taken forward by Minister Nqakula through the progressive channels within government, according to the department.

"The ACLF Forum commended this team for a great piece of work and Mr Nqakula undertook to process urgently their recommendations through the progressive channels within government," the department said in a statement.

These recommendations came from one of the four working groups belonging to the forum.

Other three working groups within the forum are the Violent Organised Crime, Mobilising the Society against Crime and Enhancing Delivery Effectiveness.

Violent Organised Crime, which focuses on the prevention and combating of house robberies, vehicle hijackings and business robberies, reported promising achievements for the quarter ending June 2007 together with the current priority actions.

It was noted in the meeting that priority government interventions included visible policing initiatives in seven provinces, which has resulted in crime prevention and reduction in high crime areas and significant breakthroughs in a number of cases.

The latest being the arrest of 13 alleged members of a cash-in-transit heist gang linked to a spate of heists in the Mthatha and the surrounding areas of the Eastern Cape.

Individual members of the gang have been linked to a variety of other crimes which include vehicle hijacking, armed robbery, possession of unlicensed firearms and escaping from lawful custody.

Business focus will therefore support these operations by enhancing information flow to the SAPS on hot spots, development of minimum standards for the management of cash and regulation of the cash-in-transit industry, cooperation and alignment of private security industry with SAPS, video surveillance and suspected criminals.

"Higher level and broader information sharing between the business sector and government is being explored," the department said.

In addition, the focus of this working group may be expanded to include incidents of murder and rape.

The forum indicated that the issue of border security and controls and the influx of illegal immigrants into South Africa were a matter of concern, saying however that necessary management and contingency plans were in place.

Other reports were also received from the Communication and Mobilising Society and Baseline Effectiveness working groups.