Prisons do everything but rehabilitate, here’s why we should care:
In a landmark case, transgender inmate, Jade September won her case against the Department of Justice and Correctional Services last month. The High Court in Cape Town, sitting as the Equality Court, ruled that she be allowed to express her gender behind bars. This ruling comes after September suffered months of discrimination. September’s case puts a spotlight on prison reform and the desperate need for transformation in the Correctional Services.
South African prisons have a haunting history. The prison system was militarised in the 1950s under the Apartheid regime. One of the main objectives of prisons under the regime was to keep inmates out of the community. The treatment of prisoners, specifically people of colour was inhumane and designed to do the opposite of rehabilitate.
However through the democratization process, the Department of Correctional Services officially committed to a policy that aims to make prisons more humane places. The policy-makers were of the view that rehabilitating offenders was crucial for their successful integration back into society. It seems this commitment has been forgotten as the years have gone on.
Prisons are overcrowded, ruled by gangs and treatment is anything but humane. For this reason and several others research has shown that close to 90% of prisoners in South Africa reoffend after their release. This is a clear indication that the prison system is not rehabilitating inmates, but rather creating hardened criminals. This is however not an issue unique to South Africa. In the United States almost half of the inmates are arrested again within eight years of their release from prison.
The lack of rehabilitation mainly stems from a lack of resources many prisons have severe space constraints and do not have rooms in which to run programmes that facilitate the process. Prison conditions are not conducive to a learning environment. The fact that this is not an issue unique to South Africa or even the third world shows that perhaps the problem is not necessarily the insufficient resources but rather a lack of care for the plight of prisoners. Most tax-payers do not want to hear that their money is going to pay for services for criminals. Logically one should however see that rehabilitating convicts is in the best interest of everyone because it is the thing that will lead to a decrease in repeat offenders thus decreasing crime.
The 2019/2020 departmental budget shows administration and incarceration receive far more resources than rehabilitation. According to the Business Day of the R25.4 billion allocated for the financial year, 78% goes towards those two items incarceration and administration. Rehabilitation and social reintegration receive just 12% of the budget.
The one place where some, very little, transformation can be seen is in healthcare, this came after Dudley Lee, a former inmate at Pollsmoor, won his case against the department in the Constitutional Court in 2016. The case indicated a need for the overhaul of health services and prevention in prisons. Internationals funding was received to facilitate this but little change can be seen. At any point Pollsmoor can be seen to be 38% overcrowded, which makes way for the spread of infectious diseases.
Even with additional funds in order to create a proper strategy to target the issues plaguing the prisons accurate data is needed, this however is another issue. In the 2016 budget vote speech, Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha said the auditor-general had serious concerns about the credibility of records for its incarceration, rehabilitation and care programmes. He added that the data was not reliable when compared to the evidence provided. This calls into question several crucial indicators.
Prison reform and human rights advocates need to place pressure on the government to take responsibility and remain true to their promises listed in legislation. This involves making an effort to reduce overcrowding by rehabilitating and preventing the occurrence of repeat offenders. Improving prison infrastructure and access to basic health services to allow for an environment conducive to learning and healing.
The justice system also needs reforming in terms of bail policies and practices, reviewing prolonged detention of individuals awaiting trial and sentence as several instances of overcrowding can be attributed to those awaiting trial.
It is time for civil society to rally behind cases like those of Jade September and realized that the plight of criminals should be a concern. Civil society groupings need to actively look to innovative ways to assist prisoners in their rehabilitation as could be seen with the support September received from GenderDynamix. Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said, “a society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.”
Umami politics 