Prison officials have been accused of “doing nothing” to combat gangsterism in their facilities.
|||Cape Town - Prison officials have been accused of “doing nothing” to combat gangsterism in their facilities after it emerged a gang management strategy produced years ago has yet to be implemented in many areas.
Members of Parliament’s correctional services oversight committee also said the department was failing to rehabilitate offenders and treating prisons like “warehouses” to store human beings until their release.
ANC MP Salam Abram said this reduced inmates to “forlorn souls, resigned to being nobody” and created fertile ground for gangsterism.
Correctional Services top brass were in Parliament to give an update on gang-related incidents at the Groenpunt Maximum Correctional Centre in the Free State, the Pollsmoor remand centre in Cape Town and the St Albans remand centre in the Eastern Cape.
Summarising the findings of an investigation into the Groenpunt incident in January, when a police officer was stabbed during a riot and an inmate died after allegedly being beaten by warders later, Western Cape regional commissioner Delekile Klaas said disciplinary action had been recommended against the head of the centre and the area commissioner.
The findings included that the gang management strategy hadn’t been implemented, conflict resolution had been poor, security weak and chronic overcrowding combined with staff shortages had contributed to the frustrations of the prisoners.
The management strategy had also not been implemented at St Albans, where three inmates died and several were injured after a fight between members of the 26 and 28 gangs.
Disciplinary action had been instituted against the head of security and the unit manager for poor management of keys, the failure to implement the strategy and poor control over the movement of offenders.
Correctional Services chief security officer Gcinumzi Ntlakana said the department had decided to focus on implementing the strategy in “key” centres where gangsterism was most prevalent.
“If we solve the top 20 or so sites that we recognise as being drivers of gang activism, then we’re going to have a better result than if we try to do a one-size-fits-all type of intervention nationally,” Ntlakana said.
But members of the committee were angered by the delay in rolling out the strategy and the department’s failure to respond to recommendations made by the inspecting judge of prisons and the committee, which had both probed the Groenpunt incident.
“Gangsterism is very serious in (prisons) and you are not addressing it. You are doing nothing,” said Meriam Phaliso (ANC).
“There were recommendations… we recommended to management in Pretoria two years back, please put cameras after lock-up, so that you can see what is happening… because there are not enough officials.”
She said it was “inhuman” to have 770 inmates and just four officials looking after them, as at Groenpunt.
The DA’s Lennit Max said he had asked in 2010 about the strategy and officials had said a gang management unit was to be established, but this had not happened.
Somebody had to take responsibility for the failure to comply with the policy, he said, because it had resulted in deaths and injuries.
Political Bureau