It was also revealed that a major section of the 1998 Correctional Services Act dealing with
conditions of detention of prisoners have not yet come into force. This might be a hindrance
to an effective implementation of the vision expressed in the White Paper.
At the Lindela Repatriation Center it was noticed that sufficient safeguards still needed to be
put in place to avoid the unnecessary deprivation of the rights of persons legally in the
country, especially South African citizens. Some South Africans with South African
passports were found detained in the facilities. There were other detainees who claimed to
have valid documents but were not in possession of them at the time of arrest and did not
have persons to contact to bring those documents. The authorities should be in a position to
assist such persons to collect their documents from wherever they have kept them. It will
also be helpful if Government could promote a sensitisation campaign to encourage all those
within South Africa to be with their identification documents at all times.
The Private Prison Initiative seems to be a good scheme. The infrastructure, programmes
and treatment of prisoners, the discipline, security, staff to prisoner ratio, cell space and
occupancy rate in the Mangaung prison attest to this.
However, three concerns are raised by this initiative. The first is the apparent unfair
treatment displayed between those in private prisons and those in public prisons. Privileges
accorded to prisoners in the private prison are different from those in public prisons. The
budget allocation per prisoner per day is higher (R132) than that in public prisons (R114).
This might raise questions of discrimination since all prisoners are under the custody of the
government and deserve equal treatment.
Secondly, it was also noted that prisoners from private prisons are sent to public prisons at
least six months before their release. This raises concern because a prisoner who has served
his term in the private prison in a quite different environment and maybe, rehabilitated is
now returned into another environment with quite a different management regime with a
likelihood of meeting old gang members, engaging in drugs and violence, and other antisocial behaviour. These six months in public prison might reverse the rehabilitation of the
prisoner.
Thirdly, private prisons hold only long term prisoners – ten years and over and most of the
rehabilitation training for skills development last between 4-5 years. After completing their
programme, the prisoners still remain in prison and by the time they leave, they might have
forgotten what they learnt. There is little space within prison for them to effectively utilize
their skills.
The above concerns notwithstanding, the operations of the private prison at Mangaung are
an example that should be explored and replicated across the country in other prisons.
Another major concern is warders’ (also referred to in South Africa as members) frustration
and fear. Warders express frustration at the growing discipline problems with prisoners.
Warders complain that the new laws prevent then from instilling discipline in prisons
because when they use “minimum force” to quell violence or a fight, they become a subject
of investigation for abuse of power. As a result some of them deliberately move away from
violent scenes and allow prisoners to fight. A meeting with POPCRU revealed that members
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