6 November 2009
Johannesburg — WE WELCOME Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa- Nqakula's call for medical parole policy to be debated. This chimes with the sentiments of Judge Siraj Desai, who heads the National Council for Correctional Services. Desai states rightly that medical parole has been cast in a bad light by the early release of convicted fraudster Schabir Shaik.
The premise of medical parole is that society's compassionate and humanitarian response to dying might well outweigh the competing social interest in seeing prisoners complete the punishment they have been given for breaking the law. However, if it turns out that a prisoner who was released on parole is alive and well many months after their release, as is the case with Shaik, then we have reason to suspect that medical parole was misapplied.
A review of parole policy should therefore in the first instance seek to develop safeguards against abuse.
One answer may be to shift the locus of the parole review decision from a political head like the minister of correctional services to the National Council for Correctional Services. This is not to imply that a prisoner has a duty to die once released on medical parole. That would be a rather macabre and inappropriate expectation.
Still, the aim of medical parole is to allow for a dignified process of dying in a private, familial space once it has been established that death is imminent. This means if the medical opinion on which the decision rests is proven to be based on ulterior influences, then it may be appropriate to review the decision, including possibly reversing it.
We put these thought starters on the table not because we want fewer prisoners released early on medical parole. If anything, statistics show that too many patients who should be granted medical parole on bona fide grounds do not get Shaik-like treatment.
A transparent policy needs to be designed and must then be applied evenhandedly.
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