Johannesburg prison inmate Brenda Wardle scored a partial victory this week when the Johannesburg High Court ordered that the parole board hearing her application for early release be reconvened.
The provincial commissioner of correctional services and the chairperson of the parole hearing, who are the first and second respondents in the case, have been ordered to ensure that Wardle is given a fair hearing and an opportunity to make her case.
The Mail & Guardian reported last week that, on her last appearance before the same board, her application for parole was rejected because, said the board, she had not spent enough time in jail and releasing her could be construed as condoning crime.
Wardle told the court that at her last appearance before the parole board she was not allowed to rebut an adverse report by a social worker, nor was she allowed to state her case.
Acting Judge Robbie Stockwell found the board’s failure to allow Wardle to give her side of the story constituted a contravention of a ”most basic” legal principle.
Wardle has brought the case in terms of the Correctional Services Act of 1959, which she interpreted to be saying that a prisoner may be released on parole after serving a third of her sentence.
Wardle (42), who is presenting herself for parole after completing an LLB degree in two years while incarcerated, told the court that she viewed correctional services’ parole policy as arbitrary.
She was convicted almost three years ago on 97 counts of fraud and sentenced to an effective eight-year jail term.