The number of awaiting-trial detainees in South Africa remained unacceptably high, National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli said on Friday.
He was addressing a seminar arranged in Cape Town by the justice initiative of the Open Society Institute, part of the network of Soros foundations.
Of the 160 198 inmates in prisons in the country in December last year, just over a quarter were awaiting trial.
Pikoli said the National Prosecuting Authority was working on the problem within the framework of a broader, 15-year strategic plan for the criminal justice system.
The seminar also saw the release of a survey by the justice initiative that concluded that worldwide, the harmful impact of excessive pre-trial detention on detainees, their families and society was severely under-estimated.
Senior legal officer at the initiative Martin Schonteich said about three million people worldwide were awaiting trial in detention on any particular day.
During the course of an average year over 10-million people were admitted into pre-trial detention.
Pre-trial detainees typically lived in worse conditions than convicted prisoners and suffered mistreatment and torture at the hands of police officers or guards.
Suicide rates among pre-trial detainees were considerably higher than among sentenced prisoners, and about 10 times as high as in the outside community.
”We are only beginning to understand the scale and consequence of pre-trial detention around the world,” he said. — Sapa