South Africa, an economic and political leader in Africa, is also the continent’s number one jailer.
If prisons are a reflection of society, what conclusions are to be drawn from this reality, particularly in a nation rightfully proud of its nascent democracy?
In global terms, South Africa is not alone in registering a sharp increase in its prison population. Today more than nine million men, women and children are held in penal institutions worldwide, according to the sixth edition of the World Prison Population List, compiled by Roy Walmsley at the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College, London.
More than two million of those prisoners, or 22% of the total, are found behind bars in the United States, which maintains the world’s highest rate of imprisonment — with 714 prisoners for every 100 000 inhabitants.
Russia and Belarus share Europe’s highest incarceration rate, with 532 prisoners per 100 000 inhabitants. China has the world’s second-highest number of prisoners, at 1,55-million. However, its incarceration rate (118 per 100 000) reflects only sentenced prisoners.
The latest World Prison Population List, compiled at the end of February 2005, shows South Africa with Africa’s highest incarceration rate (413 per 100 000), followed by Botswana (339 per 100 000).
Nigeria, the continent’s most populous state, trails with a modest 31 per 100 000.
In terms of absolute numbers, South Africa’s prison population of 186 700 dwarfs that of every other African country, including Egypt (80 000), Ethiopia (65 000) and even Rwanda, where approximately 103 000 of the 112 000 people behind bars are held on suspicion of participation in genocide.
Even after the release of 65 387 prisoners in June and August 2005, South Africa still has the highest number of prisoners on the continent.
Walmsley, an honourary consultant to the United Nations, says that between mid-2002 and February 2005, inmate numbers rose in 73% of the 211 countries and territories covered by the list.
”The rise in prison populations worldwide is attributable to a variety of circumstances, varying from country to country. In some it follows the election of government ministers with a ‘tough-on-crime’ agenda, in others it is related to increased use of drugs. In many it occurs despite decreases in crime levels. There are many different reasons. There is no uniform answer,” he says.
South Africa faces a complicating factor: it has been just over a decade since a democratic government inherited a racially skewed criminal justice system lacking integrity or legitimacy, in which prisons were not subject to credible or effective oversight.
Crime and democracy
The transition to democracy was accompanied by a sharp increase in the reported incidence of violent crime. Statistics from the Institute of Security Studies show that recorded violent crimes such as murder, rape and all forms of robbery and assault grew from 618 000 in 1994 to 751 000 incidents in 1999.
These trends appeared to catch the new African National Congress-led government by surprise. As the public outcry over crime grew, however, government officials increasingly adopted a ”tough-on-crime” stance.
In 1998, then deputy president Thabo Mbeki, in an address to the South African Democratic Teachers Union, likened criminals to ”barbarians in our midst”. In 1999 the late Steve Tshwete, then minister of safety and security, is reported to have suggested that police officers deal with criminals ”in the same way a bulldog deals with a bull”.
These words were accompanied by tougher laws and minimum sentencing. The prison population swelled rapidly, fuelled largely by an explosion in the number of awaiting-trial prisoners from 24 265 in January 1995 to 63 964 in April 2000.
Today, South Africa’s 240 prisons are grossly overcrowded. In September 2004 these institutions, designed for a total capacity of 113 825 prisoners, housed 186 546 people.
”It is no exaggeration to say that, if the SPCA [Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] were to cram as many animals into a cage as our correctional services are forced to cram prisoners into a single cell, the SPCA would be prosecuted for cruelty to animals,” said Pretoria High Court judge Eberhard Bertelsmann in February 2005 when he gave reasons for not sending Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to prison.
Few dispute that South Africa’s social and economic disparities help to fuel crime. Inspecting Judge Hannes Fagan writes in the 2003/04 annual report of the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons that of crimes committed, 30% were economic crimes and 50% aggressive crimes ”largely engendered by poverty and joblessness and the frustrations that they cause”.
The immediate cost to the state of keeping so many people in jail is approximately R25-million a day.
But perhaps the most shocking statistic is that 28% of those behind bars — more than 52 000 people — are awaiting trial and have not been found guilty of any crime.
The awaiting-trial prisoners, who are held on average for several months, are not involved in any rehabilitation programmes, receive no training or schooling, and seldom have access to recreational facilities.
Retribution or rehabilitation?
Addressing Parliament in June 2004, President Thabo Mbeki quoted British columnist Will Hutton at some length. Hutton, Mbeki said, ”argues that ‘Western democracies have been characterised by one broad family of ideas that might be called left — a belief in the social, reduction in inequality, the provision of public services, the principle that workers should be treated as assets rather than commodities, regulation of enterprise, rehabilitation of criminals, tolerance and respect for minorities — and another broad family of ideas that might be called right: an honouring of our inherited institutional fabric, a respect for order, a belief that private property rights and profit are essential to the operation of the market economy, a suspicion of worker rights, faith in the remedial value of punitive justice and distrust of the new.”
Mbeki said his government endorsed the ”broad family of ideas that might be called left”.
Notwithstanding the president’s remarks, however, contradictory signals are evident within the criminal justice system. For example, minimum sentencing laws were extended in 2005, mandating minimum jail terms of up to 25 years and life for a variety of offences, including categories of theft, drug dealing, assault, rape and murder.
”The effect of the minimum sentence legislation has been to greatly increase the number of prisoners serving long and life sentences. It has resulted in a major shift in the length of prison terms,” points out Judge Fagan in the 2004/05 annual report of the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons.
Fagan says the numbers continue to rise and an annual growth rate of about 7 000 will lead to such inhumane conditions that mass releases of prisoners will be required periodically.
On the other hand, in February 2005, the Cabinet officially adopted the White Paper on Corrections, which proposes a radical shift in prison policy towards rehabilitation, to better reflect constitutional imperatives, and to conform to international human rights statutes to which South Africa is a signatory.
However, the white paper acknowledges that there is a tremendous gap between the policy shift that it envisions and the present reality.
- This articles was made possible by a two-month Media Fellowship granted to Roelf by the Open Society Foundation of South Africa in co-operation with the South African Press Association. – Sapa