justice shop Peter Dickson Port Elizabeth’s St Albans prison is set to become a one-stop justice shop for awaiting-trial prisoners when South Africa’s first court within a jail opens next month. Bankrolled by Business Against Crime (BAC) in the Eastern Cape, the venture aims to reduce escapes and slash transport costs between the prison and courts. The Department of Justice has approved the construction of the court, which will hear remand cases. St Albans is a medium security prison on the city’s western outskirts.
A mock trial run was held last Tuesday, with the first hearing scheduled for October 12. The court will sit every Thursday morning. BAC said in a statement that the facility would limit the chances of prisoners escaping from Port Elizabeth’s city centre law courts while in transit or awaiting trial and would reduce the number of postponements clogging up the court role. Prisoners due for court appearances would also be easily located and identified, while the state would save thousands of rands in transport and related costs. Each awaiting-trial prisoner already costs the state an average of R83 a day. BAC said its next project, with building awaiting the approval of the Department of Public Works, was setting up an identification parade facility at St Albans for violent criminals. There is only one such facility in the city, at a beachfront police station, and BAC says a St Albans ID parade room will ”prove to be cost-effective and less of a security risk”. The latest prison escape in the province took place in Butterworth on Monday when six awaiting-trial prisoners sawed through the bars of their holding cell. Last year there were 46 escapes in the Eastern Cape. In the first 10 months of 1999 there were 386 escapes nationwide.