National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi has acknowledged that corruption is sometimes involved when dockets for criminal court cases go missing, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Wednesday.
He told Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) on Wednesday that officials could be offered up to R25 000 to lose dockets.
”There is a human element. It has nothing to do with training.
”A docket is sold from time to time for R25 000. So someone who has been charged goes to this inspector or to this official and says, ‘I’ll give you R25 000, give me the docket.’ That’s how dockets get lost,” he said.
Selebi’s acknowledgement came during a Scopa hearing into an auditor general’s report on the financial management of the South African Police Service.
He was responding to a question from Vincent Smith, a committee member, about a finding by the auditor general that missing dockets are one of the causes of an increasing backlog of court cases waiting to be finalised.
The auditor general’s report suggests that a lack of training combined with a lack of physical controls results in investigation dockets going missing.
According to the report, Selebi denied that the police are responsible for court-case backlogs.
He said fingers should rather be pointed at court officials who, he said, lacked proper supervision and determined their own working hours.
”The fact that the case exists means the police have done their job.
”If you look at the reasons for a case backlog, you look somewhere else and I can tell you where to look: those people who work three hours, 50 minutes per day on average, who must listen to these cases; they work three hours, 50 minutes, not more.
”The result is that he listens to two cases a day, he goes home. Then you have a backlog of 200 000 cases.” — Sapa