House Chair, the ACDP is fully aware of severe overcrowding at many of the correctional services (as highlighted by other speakers) at 58% which year-by-year is getting worse. This negatively impacts on attempts at rehabilitation and places the safety and security of both inmates and officials at risk.
But let us remember that Correctional Services is a receiving department and as crime levels increase and more offenders are successfully prosecuted, so does the pressure on Correctional Services. This overcrowding impacts negatively on attempts to rehabilitate offenders and reduce recidivism.
The ACDP has long supported restorative justice principles where the offender is not a danger to society, particularly in property crimes.
In such cases, compensation should be paid to victims of such crimes instead of incarceration and this is based on the principle of restitution. Offenders can then be rehabilitated and integrated into society to lead responsible lives as opposed to the present practice of imprisonment where offenders are often raped and abused into a lifetime of crime.
Another way of addressing overcrowding is to reduce the number of awaiting trial detainees, many of whom may not be guilty of the crimes they are charged with. The challenge is, of course, with severe delays in the criminal justice system where criminal trials can take years to finalise.
Speedier finalisation of trials will go a long way to solve this problem, and there are many provisions in our legislation to reduce overcrowding, including the bail protocol (section 49G of the Correctional Services Act, section 631 and 63A of the Criminal Procedure Act) but these are not being used optimally.
Many such awaiting trial detainees have bail set of less than a thousand rand but cannot even afford nominal amounts of R500—this whilst it costs R460 per day to incarcerate such awaiting trial inmates. This does not make sense and we in the ACDP support the pilot Independent Bail Project to resolve this issue.
Lastly, we also believe—as other members have highlighted—that a way of reducing overcrowding is to enter agreements with other countries to allow the many foreign nationals who are serving sentences in our facilities to serve those sentences in their home countries after deportation.
There are between 20,000 and 25,000 foreign nationals in our facilities. And if the legislation does not exist, then we, or the Portfolio Committee of Correctional Services, should bring a committee bill to pass that legislation.
I thank you House Chair.
