A KwaZulu-Natal pilot project — proven to reduce court backlogs and overcrowding in prisons drastically — may be rolled out countrywide, if the government comes to the table with funding, the Justice and Constitutional Development Department said on Tuesday.
The department’s regional head, Bridgette Tshabalala, was speaking in Phoenix, north of Durban, during a presentation of the findings of the joint 18-month Justice and Restoration Project (JARP) report. The pilot project was started in Phoenix.
”We are all aware of the challenges in the criminal justice system — the overcrowding and the court backlogs — and this project shows that it can be reduced,” she said.
Tshabalala pointed out that many South Africans think that the criminal justice system favours criminals. ”And a convicted criminal admitted to me that they do get five-star treatment. They are treated when they are sick and they have access to antiretrovirals in prison … how many victims have those opportunities?”
The research and findings by Professor Herman Conradie of the University of South Africa and Hema Hargovan of the University of KwaZulu-Natal show that court backlogs dropped drastically within a five-month period of the use of the JARP.
The court roll at the Phoenix Magistrate’s Court stood at 5 567 cases between September 2006 and March 2007. Between April and August 2007, this dropped to 2 748 cases.
Conradie said the projected court roll using the JARP after 12 months showed an 84% drop in backlogs.
He said the JARP system is simple — instead of going to court, the offender and victim are given an option to do restorative justice whereby a victim and offender are brought together in meetings with the help of a trained mediator.
”The mediator prepares both the victim and offender to speak about the crime and give each other options to solve the problem,” he said. ”An apology offer and a sincere admission of guilt are made.”
The offender then pays back what he or she had stolen, gives services to the victim for it or does community service.
Pilot project
Conradie said with the pilot project in Phoenix, it was found that 37% of the criminal cases involved family members. Others involved neighbours and relatives. The crimes included domestic violence, common assault, assault with intent, theft, hijacking and petty crimes.
The research identified anger, frustration, provocation and lack of dealing with unemployment as reasons behind the crimes.
The project will soon be launched in schools, businesses and other provinces. ”We want special teams, consisting of ex-victims and ex-offenders, to carry out workshops in schools [to help with school violence], in churches and businesses … we also want to replicate this in other provinces,” Conradie said.
Hargovan, the researcher from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said 20 mediators have been trained but safety is an issue as mediators are afraid some offenders could be armed when attending restorative justice meetings.
Most of the cases dealt with in Phoenix were common assault, Hargovan found. ”We found that 60% of the cases were common assault … 21,2% were domestic violence cases, 14,1% were malicious damage to property, 10,6% were verbal abuse and 1,2% covered sexual assault, hijackings and muggings.
”We also found that 67,1% of victims managed to forgive the offender and thereafter move on with their life,” she added.
Only 1,2% of victims wanted the offender imprisoned.
Hargovan said through her research, it was also discovered that 81,2% of offenders had a positive change in their behaviour after the JARP by going for drug/alcohol rehabilitation and by praying.
”There was an overall vote of confidence for the JARP project and the few identified problems would be looked at more closely in future,” she said. — Sapa