According to the national police commissioner, one of those implicated in the recent Saulsville massacre is a parolee with a record of attempted murder and rape. Chris Barron asked national correctional services commissioner Makgothi Thobakgale ...
Why are parolees not being properly monitored and supervised?
Parolees are monitored and supervised.
Why then is the recidivism rate so high?
Our parolees are more than 55,000; our parole officers are less than 5,000. So the caseload for each parole officer is very high. Our parolees use family support, but we have a problem of families that are dysfunctional. Stigma drives them back to crime because communities find it hard to reintegrate them. There are parolees who, in spite of rehabilitation programmes, are in a life of crime forever, and you see them coming in and out.
Yet they keep being paroled?
I have put in place a mechanism for area commissioners to review the quality of the decisions of parole boards. I send decisions of the parole board to a parole review board as an extra measure. So we have tightened the system to address these problems.
What about improving your rehabilitation programmes?
In terms of our records, our rehabilitation programmes are giving us the results that we expect.
So why are there so many reoffenders?
If there’s no family support, no support within the community for parolees to continue on the path of being positive, there will be instances where the parolee will be attracted to negative options. That’s why we are working with community leaders, with traditional leaders, taking parolees through skills development …
Yet according to recent research, South Africa’s recidivism rate is between 55% and 95%?
Our reoffending rate is not more than 2% in terms of the statistics that we have.
How come your minister puts it at 80%?
That’s recidivism. I’m talking about offenders who are reoffending. The ones that, when we go through their profile, we find that they have reoffended.
According to a recent statement by the minister, more than 18,000 parolees have reoffended in the past three years.
Yes, but if you look at our caseload of 55,000 and you talk three years ... and we’re talking about active parolees, not those who reoffend after their parole ends.
However you look at it, 18,000 is a scary number, isn’t it?
Crime in South Africa is scary.
Even scarier when violent criminals are allowed out to murder and rape again because they’re not being monitored?
If we were not doing what we’re doing with the few officials that we have and not enough resources to track and monitor these parolees because our budget has been cut by over R11bn in the past five years …
Should prisoners with a history of murder, attempted murder and rape be paroled if you don’t have the resources to monitor and supervise them?
We have the constitution of this country, we have the Correctional Services Act, legislation that enjoins us to implement the parole system. It’s not a matter of us deciding whether we do it or not. We are busy with a parole review system where we are agreeing that we need to introduce new legislation on parole. We are taken to court by parolees for not considering them for parole.
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