South Africa’s prisons are facing a long-standing and deepening crisis of overcrowding, which not only strains the infrastructure and personnel of the department of correctional services (DCS) but is also undermining the constitutional rights of inmates and the broader objectives of rehabilitation and social reintegration.
The DCS has 162,954 inmates in correctional centres across the country. Of these, 105,023 are sentenced and 57,603 are awaiting-trial detainees. The high numbers of these detainees are the main reason for overcrowding in correctional centres. We are concerned about the staggering cost of keeping and maintaining remand detainees in correctional facilities, which costs the department R482 a day (more than R13,000 a month) for each detainee.
Another concern in this overcrowding crisis is the incarceration of foreign nationals. We heard during the budget debate that there are 25,585 foreign national inmates in correctional centres across the country, which costs the state R11m a day.
The correctional services portfolio committee is concerned about so many incarcerated foreign nationals at a time when South Africa does not have an inmate exchange programme in place with any foreign country. We intend to review this situation. The DCS and the department of home affairs must expedite deportation processes for foreign nationals with minor offences.
A 2016 ruling by judge Vincent Saldanha reaffirmed what oversight visits and reports have long revealed — that many of our prisons are operating well beyond their approved capacity, creating inhumane conditions that violate the constitution. The judgment was a stern reminder that the state is legally obligated to act decisively to reduce overcrowding and ensure that inmates are detained in decent conditions in line with their constitutional right to human dignity.
The judgment critically addressed severe overcrowding in the Pollsmoor Remand Detention Facility, finding the detainee population was about 250% of its approved capacity. It ordered the government to immediately reduce occupancy to no more than 120%.
The Correctional Services Act allows the national commissioner to alert the minister when inmate numbers exceed approved capacity — and to propose measures such as the placement of certain inmates under correctional supervision or parole. However, this provision has been underutilised, often due to administrative bottlenecks and a lack of political will.
Similarly, the Criminal Procedure Act enables courts to release those accused on a warning or other appropriate conditions if incarceration is not warranted. It encourages judicial discretion in reducing the remand population. Yet this is rarely done, with many awaiting-trial detainees languishing in custody due to not being able to afford bail, inefficiencies in investigations, or lack of proper legal representation.
Educational, vocational and psychological support services cannot reach all inmates when there is limited space and insufficient resources
The DCS and the department of justice & constitutional development need to find each other and use these two pieces of legislation more effectively. The committee calls on them to find an efficient manner to deal with overcrowding.
We have a constitutional duty to oversee and support the transformation of the correctional system. Legislative mechanisms exist to reduce overcrowding — what is needed now is implementation, co-ordination and political resolve. As judge Saldanha inferred, overcrowding in prisons is not merely an issue of numbers — it is a human rights issue but also affects the effectiveness of rehabilitation programmes.
Educational, vocational and psychological support services cannot reach all inmates when there is limited space and insufficient resources. For security reasons, access to structured rehabilitation programmes at overcrowded facilities is often limited.
Staff shortages and insufficient infrastructure further hinder individualised interventions. As a result, offenders are released without the necessary skills or support for reintegration, and that increases the risk of reoffending.
Overcrowding turns correctional centres into warehousing facilities rather than transformative environments, which compromises public safety and the constitutional goal of a rehabilitative and restorative criminal justice system.
The management of overcrowding in prisons is ultimately not just an issue for the DCS, which has no control over the number of inmates that are sent to its facilities. We need a collaborative effort — a multi-departmental commitment to address overcrowding.
• Ramolobeng chairs parliament's correctional services portfolio committee
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