Wyndham Hartley
17 September 2009
Cape Town — While prisons officials insisted yesterday that overcrowding in jails was on the decrease, Auditor-General Terence Nombembe rebuked their department for overcrowded conditions in violation of the law.
It also emerged yesterday with the tabling of the Department of Correctional Services annual report that former minister Ngconde Balfour had led the department to its umpteenth qualified report from the auditor- general, this time for millions of rands in discrepancies in the asset register.
Chief deputy commissioner for security Willem Damons told Parliament's correctional services committee that prisons overcrowding was down to 142% in the 2008-09 year from the 164% recorded in the previous financial year. Damons conceded, however, that the situation of prisons having 42% more inmates than they were designed to accommodate was less than satisfactory.
Nombembe said prisons remained overcrowded, "resulting in the department not complying with the Correctional Services Act, which requires that prisoners be detained under conditions of human dignity".
The numbers involved are daunting -- there were more than 160000 convicted and awaiting- trial prisoners in facilities designed to hold 114000. Of these 116000 were sentenced and 47000 awaiting trial.
Damons's colleague, Lucky Mthethwa, said the biggest problem with overcrowding was that for every prisoner released after having served his or her sentence, there were more arrestees waiting to take their places. The officials were also grilled about the building of new prisons which has been promised for years.
Damons said that the long- awaited new prison in Kimberley would be completed at the end of next month, and that this would provide 3 000 more places.
Next year, additional facilities at Vanrynsdorp, Warmbokkeveld, and Brandvlei would be completed, bringing the number of additional places to more than 3900. But the bad news was that the investment in new prisons would reduce the overcrowding by only about 5%.
The annual report also revealed that about 72% of sentenced prisoners had committed violent or sexual crimes. This had to be taken into account when things such as correctional supervision and/or parole were considered.
Once again, departmental figures revealed that a measure of overcrowding was avoidable, and was caused by awaiting-trial prisoners who were unable to afford bail even if it was granted to them in court.
This also applied to the thousands of prisoners who had been fined as an alternative to serving prison time but could not pay the fines.
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