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Da te: 16/02/2007
Source: Ministry for Safety and Security
Title: Media Briefing: Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster media briefing by Charles Nqakula


Justice, Crime Prevention and Security (JCPS) Cluster Media Briefing, by Mr Charles Nqakula, MP, Minister for Safety and Security

Introduction

The Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster of the Cabinet has taken a number of decisions to further consolidate its project drastically to reduce crime levels in South Africa.

The main focus of that work is capacity building across the Criminal Justice System so that the degree of effectiveness is raised in investigations and prosecutions.

We are convinced that the strategy that informs our tactics in the prevention and combating of crime is correct.

It is true, however, that there have been gaps in some aspects of our tactics that we have started addressing. At the top of the list of the weaknesses have been poor management and the absence of effective systems for command and control.

Management

We have attended to the need for better management across the cluster in the following ways:

South African Police Service (SAPS)

The police did an evaluation of the various police stations in the country. That enquiry revealed that many of the station commissioners were, at one level, excellent police officers but, on the other, were poor managers.

We decided to redeploy some experienced police officers from the senior levels to the local police stations. The injection of that experience at the lower levels is showing, already, with higher levels of service delivery and better impact on crime prevention and combating.

The need for better management and performance demanded a review of the organisational structure of the police. It became clear, therefore, that the level we had created, called the area office, was a superfluous arrangement and not necessary for policing.

Further interrogation of that matter indicated that senior and experienced personnel, as well as specialised skills, were concentrated at provincial and area level, and there was a duplication of functions between the area and station levels.

We phased the area office out and redeployed the resources that were allocated to that level to the local stations. The local stations, in the circumstances, have been empowered with more human and material resources.

A management and performance tool has been developed by the police to track every aspect of policing at the local station including how those stations are managed, the provision and utilisation of policing resources and service delivery. The instrument has been used to grade and rate all police stations.

The management and performance tool shows us at a glance where we need to make interventions for better policing.

We started the migration of police officers to the station level at the beginning of August last year. A total of 7 588 members were redeployed to the stations, comprised of 6 495 crime prevention and investigations personnel, and 1 093 support staff.

We changed management at 101 of the 169 stations where serious and violent crime is most prevalent. We replaced 239 station commissioners and 317 commanders in order to improve command and control, and increase managerial capability at the stations.

The specialised units have also been placed at the local stations for quicker response to complaints, especially those that relate to the abuse of women and children.

A total of 19 366 detectives and specialised unit members have been placed at the various stations. The biggest contingent is in KwaZulu-Natal (3 512), followed by the Western Cape (3 133) and the Eastern Cape (2 081). The allocations in other provinces are 1 552 (North West), 1 406 (Free State), 1 337 (Mpumalanga), 1 332 (Gauteng) and 771 (Northern Cape).

The SAPS management and performance chart talks to issues like crime prevention and combating, including response times to reported crime; correct utilisation of human and material resources; better use of technology as a key instrument for crime prevention and combating, and service delivery to the satisfaction of the clients the police serve, including trust and confidence building.

The new management system will help to set national performance standards and targets, assess performance against those national standards, identify non-performing stations and introduce correct measures, and, having done the assessment, to reward good performance.

The Judiciary

We are reconstructing the court administration system by way of a project we have named Re Aga Boswa (We are building). The project is designed to employ dedicated managers for the courts. We have appointed, for that purpose, 288 court managers across the country thus strengthening capacity and improving service delivery.

We started a project in September last year, called the e-scheduler, which we piloted in 200 courts. The system is a case registration and scheduling tool we want to use mostly in district and regional courts. It seeks to modernise the court system through the greater use of information technology. The system provides the user with information on the status of each case including details of the first court appearance, last postponement date and the number of days the matter has been on the roll. The e-scheduler, therefore, will help the courts to address backlogs and blockages in the system. More courts are going to convert to the new system by the end of July this year.

We have also introduced the Justice Deposit Account System which is helping to improve the management of monies paid for maintenance and bail.

The transformation of the judiciary will be accelerated, guided by the imperative to institute judicial accountability and the need to improve the overall functioning of the Criminal Justice System with respect, particularly, to case cycle times and conviction rates. As part of the process the Justice College will be revitalised to comply with changes and developments within the South African education and training environment.

Correctional Services

The management of the inmate population continues to be a great challenge to the JCPS cluster. Every year thousands are arrested, sentenced and placed in the country's correctional facilities. The levels of overcrowding in those facilities, therefore, continue to be a big problem. Overcrowding impedes the successful implementation of rehabilitation and yet, our penal system is geared more towards rehabilitation than punishment.

Apart from the 112 149 sentenced inmates, our facilities are also holding 47 042 awaiting trial detainees, for a total of 159 191 inmates. That adds to the pressures we have in the facilities.

The government remains resolute in ensuring that children are removed from police and correctional centres to either secure care facilities or the custody of their parents in line with our constitutional and legislative obligations, while, of course, ensuring public safety.

We have reduced numbers of unsentenced and sentenced children by an average 17,5% between January 2006 and January this year.

The number of awaiting trial children has dropped from 1 305 to 1 086 while the figure for sentenced children dropped from 1 107 to 897.

In the provinces of Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga, North West, Northern Cape and Western Cape secure places of safety have been opened to receive children who are in conflict with the law. Facilities are being identified in the rest of the country to convert them into such secure facilities. Funds have been allocated by National Treasury for that purpose.

The facilities in the Eastern Cape are under Social Development. There is a centre in Port Elizabeth that keeps 17 boys who were arrested for serious crimes. The second facility in Port Elizabeth accommodates young offenders for minor cases. The third facility is in East London, also for children who committed minor offences. Another facility will be built in Qumbu next year.

The Mpumalanga centre is at Hendrina in the Nkangala Region, while North West's three are in Brits, where 35 boys are accommodated, Klerksdorp and Mafikeng that will start to function, respectively, in April and June with 60 children each. A fourth centre is under construction and will be completed in December. The Northern Cape has three facilities, two in Galeshewe and one in Bellevue, Upington. The two centres in Galeshewe have 60 and 65 offenders, while Bellvue has 40.

The Western Cape has nine centres, five of which accommodate awaiting trial children. The youngest of them are 8 years old. There are 539 children in those centres, with Horizon Secure Care and Bonnytoun carrying the biggest numbers (185 and 149).

New allocations were made in the current financial year to allow us to boost to 40 100 the number of officials in the employ of Correctional Services by December last year. The previous staff complement was 33 000.

The staff increase is a step towards the implementation of the seven-day working week at Corrections.

The exercise to remove some inmates from correctional facilities is not the only method we have adopted to address overcrowding. The construction of correctional centres remains one of the key priorities to deal with overcrowding.

The construction of the Kimberley Correctional Centre is progressing well since 14 November last year, when the site was officially handed over to the department. The construction will be completed by the end of next year.

The other facilities earmarked some time ago for construction are the subject of discussions between National Treasury, Public Works and Correctional Services. The talks have been occasioned by the fact that the cost for the projects has escalated significantly. But, it is not expected that the construction will be abandoned. There is a need for the establishment of those facilities and funds, we believe, will be found.

We will continue with our person management in the country's correctional facilities. To reduce overcrowding we will improve the parole system, use non-custodial sentencing options and use transfers to the various facilities to maintain a measure of evenness in the corrections population.

Crime combating

The strategy to fight crime continues to be based, mainly, on the reduction of serious and violent crimes, which invariably result in murder. The target is the reduction of such crimes by between 7% and 10% annually. We will do a full assessment of the results of that work by the end of the 2009/10 financial year.

Murder in South Africa is generated by organised crime in the context of armed robberies (robberies at financial institutions, at shopping malls and of cash in transit, and hijackings of vehicles) and social crimes between people who know one another.

Various surveys that have been done in the past, show that at least 80% of those murders were committed by people known by the victims within the social circumstances where they live or usually meet.

But, the murders that dramatically affect the psyche of the nation are those that flow from organised crime because they are done mostly in day light on the highways, and around banks and the malls where many people are present. Some bystanders have been killed in the crossfire.

The SAPS adopted a strategy in July last year to focus on specific serious and violent crimes. In a sustained campaign against organised crime, in the last half of 2006, 8 347 suspects, connected to 10 085 cases country-wide were arrested.

Many of the suspects were involved in armed robberies, including cash-in-transit heists. The heists had spiked in the 2005/06 financial year, but decreased by 23% over the August-December period last year when compared to the same period in 2005. The biggest decrease (40%) was in November. An assessment by the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC) for January indicates a decrease of 22% compared to the same period in 2006.

The new forensic technology available to the police has helped to track and arrest the suspects.

Special attention was also directed at robberies at the shopping malls, where closed circuit televisions (CCTVs) recorded crimes in progress. The pictures of the criminals were circulated.

It became clear in police investigations that Pick & Pay outlets were targeted by organised criminals. Four SAPS members were murdered in the course of an investigation of the Pick & Pay robbery, at Honeydew, in June last year (Honeydew CAS 781/06/2006). They were killed in Jeppestown when they pursued the criminals into a house there (Jeppe CAS 1160/06/2006). Sixty-eight suspects have been arrested. More images are being studied and more arrests, therefore, are pending regarding Pick & Pay robberies.

SAPS have a dedicated permanent capacity that offers operational support in the investigation of serial murder and rape cases. The Investigative Psychology unit is among the best in the world. Using that capacity we were able to crack a number of cases, including the arrest of the 'Centurion Serial Killer' who is before court and facing 24 charges, including rape, attempted murder and a number of robberies.

Crime prevention The prevention of crime, of course, is the best way to fight crime. It is designed to stop crime before it happens. Police on the street is the best form of crime prevention. That visible policing is happening in some areas and not in others has to do with the weakness we are correcting at this time ? weak management, where some station commissioners did not know how to deploy the resources available to them.

There are other problems that we have picked up in our crime prevention regime.

Repeat offending is a problem. Some people who commit crime are previous offenders who are either on bail, awaiting trial, or are former inmates.

Quite clearly, there is a need for a review of the country's bail system. Of course, inadequate investigations, at times, have not given the presiding officers in court cogent reason to deny bail. Those weaknesses will be corrected when we complete our Criminal Justice Review and the other interventions we are making.

The Corrections rehabilitation programme will be enhanced by the appointment of more social workers and psychologists better to prepare offenders for their eventual release and reintegration into the social and economic life of their communities. Creating conditions for the reintegration will mean, also, dynamic contact with the victims of the relevant crimes as part of government's victim empowerment programme.

The partnership between the communities and the police with respect to social crime prevention, especially serious and violent attacks, is going to be strengthened. One of the ways of doing that is going to be the revamping of the Community Police Forums (CPFs), which will be not just a link between the people and the police but also an effective instrument to determine, together with the police, the policing priorities of the areas where they exist. The CPFs will also assess police performance on the basis of those priorities.

More reservists are going to be recruited in terms of the new police reservist system. There are four categories where reservists are deployed. Some do functional deployment and participate together with the police on operations. There are others who undertake general support functions at the police stations, while some give specialised support as medical doctors and pilots. The last category is reservists who are involved in rural and urban safety.

The reservists who are called out for functional duty are trained in basic police work but have been impressive in their operational response. The intention is to recruit as many as 100 000 reservists to work in defined areas as part of sector policing that will improve significantly police visibility and enhance policing at local level.

Border control

The partnership between the departments of Public Works, National Treasury, Safety and Security, Defence, Home Affairs and Intelligence, has been strengthened to deal with border control.

The JCPS cluster and Public Works are going to do an assessment of the facilities available to officials who are doing border control work to improve them, especially the offices and houses they use.

This has been necessary as a co-ordinated response to the threat of globalised crime.

The Cabinet Lekgotla decided last month to follow the international norm and ask the South African Revenue Services to coordinate the country's border control work.

The freer movement of goods and people means that countries are exposed to a greater level of transnational criminal activity. Rogue traders and organised crime syndicates exploit international trade supply chains through the evasion and avoidance of duties and taxes, the smuggling of goods, money laundering and trade in counterfeit goods.

A Green Paper on customs modernisation is going to be released soon for comment. The comments will help to inform the Draft White Paper on the matter.

The Heads of State of South Africa and Mozambique reaffirmed last year their commitment to joint controls at the Lebombo Border Post. The issue related to decisions that were taken in 1997. The two countries signed in 1998 a protocol to establish the combined border post facility.

When completed, the facility will provide a one-stop border post for effective and efficient border control.

The Public Works Department is lifting up the matter for implementation during the current financial year. It is hoped that the project will be up and running in 2009.

Meanwhile, SAPS are on course to complete the placement of police units on the borders between South Africa and the neighbouring countries. When that deployment has been completed, there will be a total of 5 000 police doing crime prevention on our borders.

The Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation decided at a recent meeting to make border control one of the issues requiring attention particularly in light of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. There is an understanding that there will be more pressures on the borders brought about by people who will enter South Africa both legally and illegally. The matter is going to receive continuous attention.

In an effort to curb the growth of illegal migration, the Department of Home Affairs is going to appoint Airline Liaison Officers at all major airports around the world. That will be in keeping with international practice. The Airline Liaison Officers will work with Home Affairs' National Immigration Branch to handle passenger information and documents.

The finalisation of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) in September last year will assist in the creation of a database for all undocumented foreign nationals who were deported from South Africa.

The department will soon introduce a new secure passport production system that will, at this stage, not result in the review of the security features of the current South African passport. The system will be operational by the beginning of December.

National security

In line with a Constitutional obligation that the security services must act and must teach their members to act in accordance with the Constitution and the law, the Minister for Intelligence Services recently launched a Civic Education programme.

The programme, which will be institutionalised and accredited by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) will contribute to building professionalism and entrench respect for the Constitution and the rule of law as key values for intelligence officers in South Africa.

All members of the services will undergo the training and its objectives will be written into the performance contracts of Heads of Service. The programme will also entail a series of internal and external debates allowing members of the public to add their voice to developing a new intelligence philosophy.

In November last year a Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence was launched. It has produced a draft concept paper to develop a broader understanding and further insight into the mechanisms of control within the service. The commission will hold public hearings in March to encourage contributions by members of the public.

The intelligence community is also developing further the South African National Academy of Intelligence (SANAI) so that it can produce better trained intelligence personnel. The new principal, Mike Sarjoo, has started a consultation process with international, private and local law enforcement agencies to further develop the intelligence curricula and training interventions. A satellite campus will be opened at the intelligence headquarters in April this year.

All these initiatives are responding to the instruction by government for better training and capacity building in the intelligence community.

South African National Defence Force (SANDF) rejuvenation

The Department of Defence submitted a strategy to Cabinet in 2003 called the Human Resources Strategy 2010. Part of the strategy was to rejuvenate the SANDF. The Military Skills Development System (MSDS) that was adopted as a core component of that strategy has been used ever since to attain the goal of a rejuvenated SANDF. The deployment of young and fit members, especially for peace-keeping, is a key requirement of a rejuvenated SANDF.

Since 2003, 17 714 young South Africans have completed or are in the process of completing the MSDS course. Of 8 463 members who completed the course, 6 433 are serving in the regular force. Intakes have grown from 1 967 in 2004 to 4 518 in 2007.

The SANDF has deployed in some African countries in support of the African Union Peace and Security Council. They are in Burundi, Comoros, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Sudan (Darfur) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Issued by: Ministry for Safety and Security
16 February 2007

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