Recent weeks have seen several newspaper headlines about violent incidents at schools. In Pretoria, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed to death by one of his fellow pupils at Steve Tshwete Secondary School; another 15-year-old succumbed to gunfire at Sikhanyisele Primary School in Mamelodi. A week prior to that, a KwaZulu-Natal boy accidentally shot and injured two of his school friends on a bus.
These violent outbursts among children are not isolated incidents. In reality, most crimes are committed by young offenders. ”Estimates talk about 60% to 80%,” says Amanda Dissel, manager of the Criminal Justice Programme at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) in Johannesburg.
The CSVR is in its third year of running an integrated young-offenders programme in Johannesburg prisons, in cooperation with other organisations such as the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Reintegration of Offenders, Themba HIV/Aids and Drugwise. Its aim is to understand the nature and causes of youth criminal behaviour better, to help offenders after their release from prison and, ultimately, to reduce violence brought about by South African youth.
Each year 20 young offenders take eight months to complete the full day programme of the Integrated Young Offender Programme (IYOP).
”At the start we make participants draw a lifeline, where they have to illustrate what happened at what points in their life [to make] them who they are now,” says Dissel. ”The programme then kicks off into alternative-to-violence training, based on similar training in American prisons. The main part of the IYOP is psychosocial in its approach; it will help prisoners better understand themselves, why they did what they did, and help them make better choices in the future. The whole thing is based on sharing experiences.”
The course targets men between 18 and 21 years old. ”But that does not always work because it can be hard to find out prisoners’ real ages.”
The CSVR also looks to work with youth convicted of serious crimes. ”We try not to include rapists because the programme is not especially designed to deal with sexual offenders.” Dissel says ”try” because offenders are often convicted of more than one offence.
Youth participating in the programme also must not have other obligations in prison such as school or work. ”Prison days are short, so offenders have to choose between things on offer. They can learn in school, enrol in the programme or earn some money, which can be very welcome in prison. We have one guy in the programme now who might drop out because he has been given the opportunity to work. It should not be this way; these kids should be able to do all three,” Dissel says.
Since minimum-sentence legislation was passed in 1997, people are in prison longer. Prisons are full; full with young people. Dissel says this is because the youth population in South Africa is bigger than in many other countries. ”Youths are also more likely to take risks,” she says. ”They experience a lot of peer pressure.”
In the years that the IYOP has been running, Dissel has gained some insight into causes of crime. ”The root might very well be poverty and unemployment,” she agrees with many others. ”But crimes are not always committed in order to get food and other means of survival. Youth crime often goes back to the basic socio-economic status of the family; a lot of offenders come from broken or unstable families.”
Dissel also points to the rate of alcohol and substance abuse found among young offenders’ parents and adds that parents are often inconsistent regarding discipline. ”Parents are being lenient one time and overly strict the next. That is confusing for children.”
”Crime really is a social problem. The risk factors start at an early point within the community, the family or on the individual level,” Dissel adds. That’s why she thinks that South Africa should deal with the problem of crime by addressing these basics. ”Make sure people have decent homes to live in to deal with poverty causes for crime; give parenting classes to deal with the inconsistency factors.”
Many people relapse into a life of crime after being released from prison. No official statistics are available but estimates are high, ranging from 50% to 85%.
Dissel says: ”One major problem is when prisoners are released there is no support system. Families give up on incarcerated family members. It is important to establish a network for these kids to fall back on when they get out of jail.” During the IYOP, efforts are made to reconnect young offenders with their families.
As manager of the CSVR’s Criminal Justice Programme and with a background in criminal law and human rights, Dissel thinks crime should not be seen as an isolated problem. ”Causes for youth crime go deep and that’s why we should not neglect basics like the family network.”
The end of this year will bring the first evaluation of the IYOP. The CSVR will check how former participants who were released from prison are doing in the outside world. ”It will be difficult,” says Dissel. ”Keeping track of people, once out of prison, is hard and of course we have no baseline to measure against.”