It is hard to understand the rationale continuously detaining a person who has been granted bail of only R50 or R100 by the court and cannot afford to pay, and yet the State spends R114 a day on him/her for an average of 143 days (amounting to R16,302) before bringing him/her before the courts. By granting a small bail amount, the court seems to be suggesting that the offence committed is not serious, the offender is likely not harmful and the offender can actually be released on his/her own recognizance. It is ironical to hold someone for not paying R50 yet spend R114 on him/her daily. By keeping people in detention their social lives are disrupted - learners stop going to school and employees risk losing their jobs. Family bonds are shaken and risk being disintegrated. In instances where the bail fees are small, it may be important for the prison authorities to approach the courts to seek the release, on their own recognizance, if genuinely they cannot afford to pay. Conditions can be attached to their release – such as reporting to the nearest police station once a week, withholding of their passports, or not to leave the town until they have appeared in court The Special Rapporteur also observed that over the past decade there has been an increase in the use of incarceration in general and long term sentences in particular and little use of noncustodial sentences. In 1995 for example, there were about 10,000 prisoners serving longer than 10 years but in 2004, the number has increased five times to about 50,000 – with 21,745 serving between 10–15 years, 9,855 serving between 15–20 years and 14,040 serving between 20 years to life. Some of the sentences provide no hope of release, no possibility of rehabilitation, and defeat the whole essence of a prison as a place of correction for reintegration. The Special Rapporteur was informed that some inmates have been sentenced to 96 years, some 150 years and another for 2000 years. One of the main objectives of the prison service is to carry out rehabilitation of the prisoner, empowering him or her to be able to adapt into society when released. The aim of imprisonment should be to renew the perpetrator and society, to protect its human values and its interests. Punishment which attacks the dignity and the integrity of the human being, such as long-term and life imprisonment, or isolation and deprivation of basic necessities run contrary to the essence of imprisonment. This sentencing trend seems to negate the whole essence of corrections – rehabilitation and reintegration. It defeats the mission and vision enunciated in the Correctional Services Act and the Government White Paper on Corrections. The Draft White Paper provides in paragraph 21 of the Executive Summary that “… the period of imprisonment should be used to nurture and rebuild the relationships between the offender, the community and society at large…”. But by imposing prison terms that give the offender no real hope of release jeopardizes the whole process of rehabilitation and reintegration. It defeats the whole concept of a prison as a place of correction, of reformation and the idea that people go to prison to be reformed so that they can eventually be reintegrated into society. Such a sentencing trend breaks rather than builds relationships and breeds or encourages violence in prisons. Any sentence imposed on an offender must seek to appeal to the latter’s conscience: first that he/she has wronged the community and secondly that he/she has another chance of making amends to that community. It must conform to the general understanding that