(c) Exercise Recreational facilities are very inadequate in most of the prisons. Most of the prisons have mostly in-door games and in some cases, such as in Stanger and Durban Youth Centre, the Leeuwkop Juvenile Centre, these games are available to the prisoners. In the Stanger prison, the pool tables had been packed for a very long time without use. The authorities complain that the inmates destroy the property. Because of the lack of out door activities, prisoners are locked up for unnecessarily long periods – 23 hours a day in most cases. In St Alban’s Prison they have only about 30 minutes a day to exercise outside of their cells. Because of the large number of prisoners and the limited personnel, authorities usually cancel scheduled sporting exercises or in some cases limit the time allocated for the sport. This has been interpreted by some prisoners as discrimination against their own game because in some cases a particular game has been cancelled three times consecutively. The lack of outdoor activities such as football, volleyball, rugby and cricket in some prisons cannot be attributed to lack of space, because save for the Stanger Prison, most of the other prison facilities are on large areas of land. This could be attributed to the high priority that authorities attach to security and the few personnel at their disposal to ensure that security. The Mangaung prison however offers sporting activities such as football, rugby, cricket and netball. In the Lindela Repatriation Centre, the detainees spend the whole day playing different games, football, and volleyball and there is a television set in every room that provides entertainment throughout the day. There is no provision for exercise of any form for detainees in police stations. (x) Detainees’ rights and discipline It was observed that most of the detainees do not know about their rights. Most of the detainees at the police stations didn’t seem to understand the rights in the “notice of rights in terms of the constitution” (See Annex V) given to them prior to their detention. This is either because they do not bother to know or because the authorities deliberately do not want them to know. Some of the detainees were asking about rights that were already in the document, such as whether they could make calls, that they would need assistance from the Legal Aid Board for bail application. It didn’t seem they knew they had the right to remain silent. The Special Rapporteur noticed that most of the detainees could not read, let alone understand the rights. Most facilities have little or no arrangement for prisoners to channel complaints to the appropriate authority without fear of reprisals. In most cases, it is difficult for a prisoner to meet the head of the institution. Furthermore, authorities do not explain to detainees what their rights are in a lamguage they would understand. For instance, in the Moroka Police Station, the Special Rapporteur found persons who had been detained for drunkenness and others for crossing the railway. Even though they were due to be released on paying the fine. They had also not been informed by the authorities that they could pay a fine of R100 and be released. The Special Rapporteur was informed that they could actually be released by the magistrate on a mere warning or be requested to pay a lesser amount. 51

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