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Date: 23/11/2004
Source: Ministry of Correctional Services
Title: Balfour: Dialogue towards reducing crimes against women and children


ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER OF CORRECTIONAL SERVICES, MR BMN BALFOUR, MP, AT THE DIALOGUE TOWARDS REDUCING CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Programme Director
Deputy President Jacob Zuma
Cabinet Colleagues
Invited Dignitaries
Members of the Women’s Network
Ladies and Gentlemen

In our efforts to bring about a significant reduction in crime levels in our country, we need to realise the centrality of the rehabilitation of offenders in this process. If we want to break the cycle of crime, we obviously have to focus on broader societal challenges that include the imperative of focusing on the correction of offending behaviour in conjunction with the rehabilitation of offenders, aimed at bringing about a change in their attitudes, behaviour and social circumstances.

We can never contemplate reducing crime in the absence of addressing those social challenges that contribute towards an environment on which crime literally feeds. Our real chance of success does not lie solely in crime prevention. Without a holistic approach to dealing with the scourge of crime, we are unlikely to succeed in our stated goal of reducing contact crimes by between 7% and 10% over the next ten years. Societal challenges such as dysfunctional family life, the need to regenerate positive social values, the urgency of poverty alleviation and our quest for sustainable economic growth and development are all central to our efforts to reduce crime.

As the state’s agent in rendering the final level of correction, the Department of Correctional Services has a crucial role to play in the prevention of crime. It is a myth that this can take place in isolation and that only incarceration will bring about a reduction in criminal activity.

In fact, the contrast is true. Focusing solely on incarceration and safe custody reinforces the negative connotation of an institutionalised prison culture. It does nothing to reduce recidivism and very likely contributes in a significant way to the perpetuation of crime and criminal activity.

To bring about the institutional change from punishment and treatment to correction and development, DCS has a need to gear all our activities to a rehabilitation mission through which we deliver services and programmes to offenders without compromising security, and in this way, ensure that offenders leaving our correctional centres are equipped with competencies and attitudes that will not only allow them to reintegrate successfully into society but will also contribute towards offenders becoming productive and law-abiding citizens.

This is reflected in our legal mandate as contained in the Correctional Services Act, No 111 of 1998. This mandate is premised on four pillars, being the safe custody of offenders in order to protect society, ensuring humane and dignified conditions of custody, the promotion of a sense of social responsibility and the promotion of human development.

This mandate has since been conceptualised in our new White Paper on Corrections in South Africa. The White Paper positions DCS as an institution of rehabilitation. But at the same time, the White Paper positions the family as the primary level at which correction should take place and community institutions as the secondary level. Interventions by DCS is essentially at a tertiary level, recognizing the strategic role that societal institutions such as families and communities should be playing in the correction of offending behaviour.

This approach must not be viewed as a shifting of the responsibility of DCS from itself to society. Rather, it emphasizes the need for partnerships between government and civil society in dealing with crime. Correction is, therefore, a shared responsibility and an essential element in bringing about rehabilitation.

We accept the centrality of rehabilitation in making a fundamental contribution to correction in society and in our pursuit of correction and rehabilitation, we have clearly set objectives that include breaking the cycle of crime, security management, implementing the sentences of the courts, providing an environment for controlled and phased rehabilitation interventions, providing guidance and support to offenders, providing corrective and development measures to offenders, the reconciliation of offenders with victims and communities, the enhancement of family life and the promotion of the productive capacity of offenders.

There are obviously many challenges in giving effect to these goals, not least amongst them being changing the mindset of correctional officials from one that has been entrenched as a “warder concerned with security and incarceration” to that of being a “correctional official as a rehabilitator”.

Closely aligned to this are other critical challenges such as the training and retraining of members to bring everyone in line with the new strategic direction in DCS. We also have to deal with the challenges of corruption and maladministration, overcrowding, the state of our facilities and the needs of special categories of offenders such as women, children, first offenders and those with communicable and other illnesses.

In striving towards a correction-focused correctional system, we must recognize the major support and contribution needed from external partners such as NICRO. While government departments under the JCPS cluster are crucial in bringing about the synergy needed to effectively fight the spread of crime, we will fail in our efforts to bring about transformation if we do not give special attention to and make major efforts to develop, maintain and promote partnerships with families, communities, business, NGOs, CBOs, faith-based organisations and other community structures.

There is an urgent need to create an optimal environment that would allow for effective and sustainable community participation in the rehabilitation of offenders. We must formalise collaborative partnerships and networks and there is an added need to move away from the perception that service organizations are in competition with or in opposition to DCS. We need to rid ourselves of the suspicions of each other. We need to see our respective areas of work and competencies as being complementary of each other. DCS alone cannot nor do we have the capacity to introduce and maintain rehabilitation programmes on our own. Nor can service organizations come into DCS facilities with an attitude that speaks of knowing it all. Without a collaborative arrangement with a regulated, yet flexible policy on service providers rendering programmes and services to offenders, we will not succeed in our aim of using correction and rehabilitation to bring about the desired decrease in crime levels.

In DCS, we have both a security and a social responsibility. Our core business remains providing a secure, safe and humane environment in which rehabilitation can take place through correction and humane development. That is the ideal to which we must strive. Present conditions make this a major challenge. We are faced with entrenched attitudes and practices – from the side of correctional officials, inmates, relatives, friends and families of inmates and society at large.

We have to deal currently with a situation that speaks of “damned if you don’t; and damned if you do.” A case in point is the wide-spread condemnation of my officials when they are accused of not thoroughly searching inmates or visitors to correctional centres. When they do this again, they are accused of not respecting people’s human rights and of violating people’s dignity. Officials are constantly faced with a catch-22 situation. Until such time that we succeed in taking the public with us in our objectives and of winning the confidence and support of the public through our actions, such challenges will remain with us.

In developing and promoting rehabilitation as the cornerstone of our work, it is essential that such programmes are offender-specific. Whilst we might not currently have the capacity to do so as a result of budgetary, human resource and training constraints, the individual needs of offenders must be assessed and an offender-specific plan must be put in place if we want to have a reasonable chance of success. In developing these plans, we must regard the issue of gender as an essential element, especially in cases where the offender is a male and the victims are women or children.

A greater emphasis must be placed on the needs of the offender. This in itself is often a contentious issue. There are still those people who believe that prison life is one of luxury where inmates drain the resources of the state; where inmates enjoy free meals and lodging while millions of law-abiding citizens live in poverty. Again, it is an issue that we must confront. Do we want to release people into society who are very likely to again torment those very communities from which they were removed in the first place or do we want to release offenders into communities where the risk of repeat offending has been considerably reduced?

In identifying the needs of offenders, a fundamental part of it is to deal with the offending behaviour. There is a need for offenders to have an understanding of why they did what they did that landed them in prison. It will then be easier to deal with the offending behaviour. Rehabilitation, therefore, has two essential components – that of correcting offending behaviour and that of bringing about a permanent positive change in their lives. In gearing for rehabilitation, we need to be as inclusive as possible, covering skills development, spirituality, physical and psychological needs of inmates, education, empowerment to lead productive lives, preparation for reintegration into society, and above all, personal correction.

As DCS, we are challenged to deliver on this. Our huge prison population makes this a formidable task but it is not an impossible one. As at 31 August this year, we had a prison population of 186,739 offenders. Of this total, almost 50 000 are awaiting trial detainees. A worrying aspect of these statistics is that a total of 76 127 of those incarcerated are youth between the ages of 14 and 25 years. This includes both sentenced and unsentenced young people. Of this, 3 562 are children under the age of 18 years. We also have 4 152 women incarcerated. In many instances they are held for economic crimes and in other cases, their incarceration is as a result of their responses to continuous abuse by males. As a society, we need to be concerned about the levels of incarceration, more so, in the case of women and children.

Our sentencing regime can not be only punitive. We need to be finding the ideal balance with corrections. In that lies our greatest chance of success in reducing the levels of crime.

There is a great need to challenge offending behaviour at its onset. It should happen in our homes, in our families, in our sports clubs, places of worship and in the workplace. We can no longer be tolerable of offending behaviour. We must confront ourselves about what we do to either prevent repeat offending or what we do to directly or indirectly contribute to offending behaviour. Communities and NGO’s have as much a responsibility in this regard as DCS and government. We can no longer just do the nice things. We can no longer just do the things that we believe will give us favourable press or donor funding. We must also do the unpopular if it is in the interests of the common good.

We must reassess the manner in which we respond to offenders. We must evaluate whether our communities are contributing to creating an environment that is favourable to offenders and would-be offenders. While it remains government’s responsibility to deal with crime and its impact on the lives of our citizens, we must also accept that communities and community involvement are the keys to success. There can never be a separation of the two. All the good intentions of DCS as spelt out in the White Paper will come to nought if we do not pursue partnerships. Our attempts to establish 36 Centres of Excellence throughout the country where rehabilitation can flourish will be wasted resources if we release offenders into communities where circumstances favour repeat offending.

As long as we cannot understand and see the value of rehabilitation as a tool in fighting crime, we will continue having overcrowded prisons and will continue to struggle in our efforts to turn prisons into correctional centres where offenders are not taught the tricks of the crime trade but where they are prepared for a positive role in life after serving their debt to society.

The challenge remains with all of us.

I thank you.

Issued by: Ministry of Correctional Services
23 November 2004
Source: Department of Correctional Services

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