Pretoria - The justice system imposing harsher sentences on guilty criminals has not shown a visible impact to reduce crime or discourage repeat offenders, says national commissioner of the Department of Correctional Services, Makgothi Samuel Thobakgale.
Almost half of the inmate population in Gauteng was serving life imprisonment, he said.
This was an indication the minimum sentencing legislation and harsher sentences approach had had no visible impact on the crime rate or repeat offending by parolees and ex-offenders, he said.
South Africa had one of the highest per capita inmate populations, ranking 12th in the world and the highest in Africa, illustrating crime persisted, irrespective of harsher sentences, he said.
“This is a disturbing phenomenon as many citizens do believe imprisonment will reduce the crime rate in SA.”
The conversation to end this culture to re-offend needed to take place immediately when an offender arrived at prison, he said, with the emphasis on crime prevention. “We now start with remand detainees. We introduced it this year.
“The second part is the continuous involvement of the family and community.
“We need to revive community corrections forums with police, Justice officials, NGOs, parolees, ex-offenders, the victims and local leadership to have a structured conversation that produces projects, building a thick layer against committing crime again.”
Thobakgale also believed in restorative justice to assist in the rehabilitation of offenders and protecting crime victims, involving them in Victim-Offender dialogue.
Pretoria News