South African Prisons Open Doors to Better Partnerships
South Africa’s Department of Correctional Services has an important role to play in promoting community safety. Not only must this department ensure that convicted criminals are kept in prisons but that they are also rehabilitated so that they do not commit further crimes when they are released. A recent initiative signals a new approach by the department to strengthen such partnerships but there is still room for improvement.
Tizina Ramagaga, Junior Researcher, Crime and Justice Programme, ISS Pretoria Office
South Africa’s Department of Correctional Services (DCS) is a critical yet often underrated part of the criminal justice system. The DCS is mandated to improve community’s safety by keeping in prison those who have been convicted of serious crime and rehabilitating convicts so that they don’t pose further danger to society once they have served their sentences. It is because of these important responsibilities and the direct bearing that it has on community safety that the DCS has often stated that “corrections is a societal responsibility” that requires different role-players.
Indeed, the Department has succeeded well in its mandate to keep convicts in prisons by reducing the number of annual escapes by 130% from 241 to 56 between 2000 and 2010. However, the mandate to rehabilitate and reintegrate offenders into communities has proven more difficult to fulfill. This mandate is important because if convicts are not adequately rehabilitated or reintegrated into society they are more likely to commit further crime. It is therefore of concern that it is DCS policy that only those serving a sentence longer than two years are provided with ‘sentence plans’ that present opportunities for skills development and rehabilitation. As 54% of those sentenced to prison serve a sentence shorter than 24 months, a majority of convicts are not provided with an opportunity to be rehabilitated or learn skills to enable them to become productive members of society.
The reason for this policy is that the DCS is constrained by its budget from providing rehabilitation programmes to more convicts. However, DCS’ spending does have an impact on the extent to which it can achieve its objective. The reduction in escapes has a lot to do with the fact that it spends a large proportion, 34% on security. On the other hand, once salary and other costs are factored in, the DCS is only left with 7% of its budget for “development and social re-integration”. The solution to the problem has long been identified as promoting partnerships with external role-players to assist with rehabilitation. The 2005 White Paper on Corrections states that, “The Department of Correctional Services shall grant community-based service providers access to its institutions for the rendering of programmes and services to offenders aimed at fostering rehabilitation.” In that year the department identified 1235 such stakeholders in its annual report. However, it was only in its 2009/10 Strategic Plan, that the department indicated the need to develop a strategy to manage how the department engages with its various stakeholders.
The first large event to give effect to the way that the DCS seeks to engage with its stakeholders occurred on 7-8 April 2011. The Minister of Correctional Services, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula along with the National Commissioner, Tom Monyane and the Chairperson of the Correctional Services Portfolio Committee, Vincent Smith convened a conference of “partners of the DCS” including media groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs). The conference was the first such event where the department met with a variety of its external partners to discuss ways of improving partnerships with the DCS.
After two interactive days, the department compiled a set of eight draft resolutions to strengthen partnerships with the DCS. Amongst the resolutions were agreements to strengthen partnerships to deliver health care services to mentally ill offenders, provide educational programmes to inmates so as to increase their skills levels and establishing ‘halfway houses’ for offenders who have been released on parole but require additional assistance while reintegrating into society. Another notable resolution was the provision of funding to CBOs who are able to provide services to convicts. A DCS task team will finalise the draft resolutions following the inputs from the conference delegates and will give feedback on their implementation within three months.
The conference was a positive step towards strengthening partnerships between the DCS and the various organisations that can assist it. However, in moving forward there were a few areas where the department could improve when holding future partnership events. Invitations to the media, for example, were sent out the day before the conference and some civil society organisations only received invites two days before the event. Invitations and the programme agenda should be distributed well in advance to allow partners time to prepare so that they are able to better engage with some of the issues and challenges raised at the conference.
It is also important to ensure that key role players who are instrumental to allow for a better understanding of some of the challenges are available to participate in such conferences. For example, one of the critical challenges raised at the conference was to intensify the fight against corruption. However, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), who has spent years investigating fraud and corruption at the Department was not present to brief delegates on what had been achieved and what was further needed. Rather, the only focus given to the issue of corruption was the launch of the Department of Public Services and Administration’s anti-corruption unit on 24 June 2011. While this initiative is to be welcomed, it was not clear how this new unit will cooperate with the SIU or deal specifically with corruption within the DCS.
Partnerships between the DCS and external organisations can to a large extent mitigate the financial and human resource constraints that the Department faces in trying to deliver on its mandate. It is therefore commendable that the DCS has publicly committed itself to identifying and addressing the key concerns of those that can assist it. Hopefully, this is not a once-off conference but rather the start of an ongoing process whereby partnerships between the DCS and organisations that support it can grow from strength to strength. Although the DCS are seen as the last pillar of the criminal justice system, it can improve public safety by ensuring that convicts are treated humanely so that they can be reintegrated into society without presenting a further threat. This important responsibility is too often overlooked when there is a focus on retribution and punishment as the primary response to South Africa’s crime challenge.
