South Africa’s Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour has reported figures indicating that the number of prisoner escapes from correctional facilities has been on a downward trend in the post-apartheid period.
Asked in Parliament by Freedom Front Plus MP Willie Spies what the number of prisoner escapes were between 1984 and 1993 and then after democracy in 1999
up to the latest specified date, the minister said in a written reply on Tuesday that in the period 1984 to 1985 — between April and March of those years 1 027 escaped. By the period April 1988 to March 1989 this had dropped to 575, the lowest figure in the decade, but it climbed back up to 1 171 in the 1992/93 year.
In the calendar year of 1994, the year of democracy, 1 233 prisoners escaped but this dropped to 1 177 in 1995 before rising to 1 244 in 1996.
However, in 1997 the trend began dropping with 989 escapes that year, decreasing to 498 in 1998, to 459 in 1999, and 250 in 2000. Just 120 escaped in 2005 and 30 escaped in the first three months of this year. – I-Net Bridge