Introduction
The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) is mandated to place offenders in a safe, secure, and humane environment, ensuring that successful rehabilitation and reintegration programs are implemented. This mandate is derived from the Correctional Services Act 1998 (Act 111 of 1998), the Criminal Procedure Act 1977 (Act 51 of 1977), the 2005 White Paper on Corrections in South Africa, and the 2014 White Paper on the Management of Preventive Detention in South Africa.
This legislation enables DCS to contribute to the preservation and promotion of a just, peaceful, and secure society by ensuring that the correctional environment is safe, secure, and humane and that offenders are optimally rehabilitated to reduce their likelihood of reoffending. The NDP articulates a vision for a safer South Africa by 2030, and this vision is supported by Priority 5 (social cohesion and safe communities) of the government’s 2019-2024 MTSF.
The department’s overall objectives are to maintain prisoners in safe, secure, and humane conditions in correctional and remand facilities; to offer convicted offenders needs-based rehabilitation programs and interventions, and to reintegrate them into communities as law-abiding citizens through the effective management of non-custodial sentences and parole. To achieve these objectives, over the next period, the department will focus on implementing its self-reliance and strategic framework, providing adequate security in correctional facilities and facilitating restorative justice. In response to budgetary constraints, over the next period, the department plans to become more self-reliant. This will involve running production workshops and agricultural farms aimed at upskilling and rehabilitating offenders by training them to produce items such as furniture, uniforms, shoes, baked goods, and agricultural products that can be sold or used within the department. The department has 21 large farms and 115 small orchards, nine bakeries, 19 textile workshops, 10 steel workshops, 10 wood workshops, and a shoe factory, where products are produced for use. In addition to improving the employability of offenders after prison, the department can contribute to poverty alleviation and job creation in communities and establish good working relationships between centers and communities.
Departmental farms produce a variety of products including vegetables, fruit, red meat, pork, milk, butter, chicken, eggs, and animal fodder. In this regard, the department carries out the following operations:
- 16 orchards nationally, making it possible to provide fruits needed
- for inmates;
- 20 farms that have the potential to produce fodder for animals feed;
- 17 dairies nationally;
- 15 piggery projects nationally that produce pork inmates; and
- Seven layers nationally.
The department plans to supplement these potential income streams by hiring out offender labor.
Providing adequate security and security equipment at
correctional facilities
Over the next three years, the department aims to keep the percentage of escapes at or below 0.031% and the rate of injuries at less than 4.6%. To achieve this, it will enhance its security operations by providing personnel with the appropriate equipment, including body armor, ammunition, leg irons, handcuffs, metal detectors, tonfas, gas or fire filters, pepper spray, neutralizers, and mobile parcel scanners. To provide for this, R24.7 billion is allocated to the Security Operations subprogramme in the Incarceration program.
Improving facilities
To continue implementing strategies to reduce expected overcrowding in correctional facilities, over the next three years, the department will provide for the construction and refurbishment of facilities.
This will ensure that a targeted 1,000 additional bed spaces are made available over the next three years. Funding for this is provided through the Facilities subprogramme, which is allocated R13.8 billion in the Incarceration program.
Effective rehabilitation
The department set out to continue to ensure that all convicted offenders receive effective rehabilitation programs that enable them to successfully reintegrate into society. In its efforts to do so, the department will implement programs that focus on addressing the underlying causes of criminal behavior, provide educational and vocational training to offenders to improve their life skills and employability upon release, and continue to implement the Self-Reliance and Sustainability Framework.
The Framework aims to guide the department towards finding innovative ways to generate revenue and contribute to economic development, while simultaneously enhancing the skills and rehabilitating offenders.
Implementation of the Framework primarily involves the management of production workshops and agricultural farms where offenders are trained to produce items (such as furniture, uniforms, shoes, baked goods, and agricultural products) that can be sold or used within the department.
The department plans to supplement these potential sources of revenue by hiring labor from offenders. The percentage of convicted offenders with correctional sentencing plans is expected to remain at 84% over the next period, and 90% of offenders are expected to participate in occupational skills programs. All funding related to the rehabilitation of offenders is done through the Rehabilitation program, which has a total budget of R$ 7 billion for the next three years.
Reintegrating offenders into society
In its efforts to enable the effective reintegration of offenders into society, the department provides aftercare support through the facilitation of programs and skills that seek to assist parolees and former offenders in being self‐sufficient.
To reintegrate offenders into the community corrections system, all parole considerations should include victim participation to provide a platform for dialogue between offenders and victims and thereby contribute to healing and restoration. The department plans to increase the number of victims participating in dialogues and other restorative justice programs from 4,100 in 2022/23 to 5 900 in 2025/26.
These activities are carried out by allocating R5.1 billion to the Social Reintegration program.
Role players
National Council for Correctional Services (NCCS)
The NCCS is a statutory body that guides the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services in developing policies relating to the correctional system and the sentence-management process.
Judicial Inspectorate of Correctional Services
The JICS was established in 1998 with the statutory objective of facilitating the inspection of correctional centers so that the inspecting judge may report on the treatment of inmates and conditions in correctional centers. The JICS is an independent office.
Medical Parole Advisory Board
The Correctional Matters Amendment Act, 2011 (Act 5 of 2011), provides for a new medical parole policy and correctional supervision. The Medical Parole Advisory Board was appointed in February 2012 to look into all seriously and terminally ill inmates who have submitted reports requesting to be released on medical grounds.
Correctional supervision and parole board
Correctional supervision and parole boards are responsible for dealing with parole matters and matters of correctional supervision.
The boards have decision-making competency except for:
- Decisions regarding the granting of parole to people who are declared dangerous criminals in terms of Section 286A of the Criminal Procedure Act, 1977 (Act 51 of 1977);
- the converting of sentences of imprisonment imposed in terms of Section 276 (A) (3) of the Criminal Procedure Act, 1977 (Act 51 of 1977) into correctional supervision; and
- Decisions about those sentenced to life imprisonment.
In such cases, recommendations are submitted to courts that, in turn, make decisions in respect of conditional placement.