Newly-appointed Correctional Services Minister Pieter Groenewald has said prisons across the country are battling with overcrowding and measures have to be implemented to curtail the problem.
NEWLY-appointed Correctional Services Minister Pieter Groenewald has said prisons across the country are battling with overcrowding and measures have to be implemented to curtail the problem.
With the correctional facilities full to the brim, Groenewald says his department has no option but to hire additional staff to guard the inmates, despite a reduced budget.
“To address the overcrowding, it is not just that we have to ensure that more people are employed to look after the prisoners. We refer to the remand detentions, we have to look at that matter and to reduce, for instance, our remand detainees awaiting trial.
“We have situations where there are people there who could not afford a bail of R100 but it is costing the department about R400 per day to keep them in our facilities.
“We will look into that matter to see how we can reduce that. We are talking here about 60,000 of those inmates that are in our facilities,” the minister said.
Groenewald said that if the number can be reduced, it will be a great relief for the national department. Reducing the number of awaiting trial prisoners will also relieve the prisons from the challenge of overcrowding, he said.
The minister added that he will be meeting different organisations who represent inmates, as he believes that the rights of incarcerated people should be respected.
“My policy is that I will have an open door to see how we all can play a role to ensure that we better conditions in our prisons,” he said.
Groenewald highlighted that to address the challenge of rampant crime across South Africa, more and more people will have to be sent to prison, which adds pressure on his department.
This, Groenewald said, means more money has to be spent on correctional services to accommodate the arrested people.
The minister noted that his department requires hi-tech equipment, for example to ensure that the cellphone signal is cut for prisoners, but such equipment cannot be bought under the limited budget.
