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The Department of Correctional Services has embarked on a campaign to recruit and retain scarce skills to enhance its capacity to implement over eleven rehabilitation programmes aimed at breaking the cycle of crime among offenders.

Briefing the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services in Cape Town, the department said its recruitment and retention strategy has begun to make important gains as numbers of psychologists has increased from about 40 when the White Paper on Corrections was adopted in 2005 to 68 in 2014, while numbers of inmates has been going down over the period from 187 000 to 156 000. The leader of the departmental delegation, Chief Deputy Commissioner James Smalberger, said currently inmate access to psychological services is three times that of ordinary uninsured South Africans, but more is required to effectively correct offending behaviour and break the cycle of crime. The 68 psychologists are employed on a fulltime basis to service about 155 000 inmates in 241 correctional centres nationally.

Chief Deputy Commissioner (CDC) of Incarceration and Corrections, Mr Smalberger, said the department needs more psychologists, social workers, medical practitioners, pharmacists and nurses, where an average vacancy rate is 16.30% as of 31 July 2014. Of the 286 vacancies in the scarce skills categories, 78 have already been advertised. The department’s recruitment and retention strategy includes granting of special higher salary notches, providing scarce skills and rural allowance, training and career growth opportunities, as well as recognising and awarding of excellence among staff.

CDC Smalberger said the department implements 11 needs-based corrections programmes that are rendered by the professionals as well as correctional officials, who are training as rehabilitators. He said the needs-based programmes are informed by the general risk assessment done on sentenced offenders within 6 hours of their admission and a security risk assessment done within 24 hours of admission. CDC Smalberger said confining rehabilitation interventions to the Rehabilitation Unit would be very limiting and misleading, as the work of correctional officials making a critical contribution in rehabilitation are budgeted for in various other programmes of the department.

Members of the Portfolio Committee called for a strategic focus on making interventions that can register requisite outcomes to feed into industry needs of technical skills, as over 75% of inmates are either unskilled and from poor households. They urged the department to also continue to strengthen various intervention programmes including centralising victim needs in the whole continuum of correctional services delivery.

Issued by: Department of Correctional Services