Yes, I said, ``through you'', Chair.
The aim of the Budget Vote of the Department of Correctional Services is to contribute to maintaining and protecting a just, peaceful and safe society by enforcing court-imposed sentences, detaining inmates in safe custody while maintaining their human dignity and developing their sense of social responsibility, as well as promoting the general development of all inmates and persons subjected to community correction.
This year the strategic focus of the department's Budget Vote is on the full implementation of the 2005 White Paper on Corrections in South Africa. The White Paper represents the final fundamental break with a past archaic penal system, and ushers in a start to our second decade of freedom, where prisons become correctional centres of rehabilitation and offenders are given new hope and encouragement to adopt a lifestyle that will result in a second chance towards becoming ideal South African citizens.
In 2010, Cabinet approved the Correctional Matters Amendment Bill, which seeks to strengthen the parole system to ensure a balance between upholding the rights of inmates and minimising the risk to society posed by offenders released on parole. It also broadens the criteria for eligibility for parole to include seriously ill and physically incapacitated inmates.
During this financial year we want to see clear plans and strategies from the department in order to begin the implementation of the legislation as soon as it is passed into law. I have confidence in and I believe that the leadership of the Department of Correctional Services is equal to the task.
I must state that the credibility of the parole board, parole in general and medical parole in particular, has been questioned in many corners. In the recent past, the issue of medical parole has been subjected to heated debate among academics, civil society groups and the public in general. I must commend the Minister of Correctional Services for her courageous and outstanding leadership in handling this issue.
Overcrowding continues to remain a key challenge for the department. The current capacity and the level of overcrowding pose several challenges and risks for the department. These include compliance with safe, secure, and humane conditions for those in custody; delivery of programmes relating to the correcting of offending behaviour and development of offenders; and the optimal utilisation of personnel.
Overcrowding has turned many of our prisons into crime-promoting institutions, instead of centres of rehabilitation. However, as the Select Committee on Security and Constitutional Development, we will enhance our oversight responsibility in this area, especially on the implementation of electronic monitoring of parolees and probationers, as well as the effective implementation of the Bail Protocol, to alleviate overcrowding.
Members should remember that the transformation of the department in the past decade included the demilitarisation of the correctional system in order to enhance the department's rehabilitation responsibilities at the beginning of April 1996. This required the creation of a completely new system. This period also saw the movement from a paramilitary structure with military ranks, drill, and parades, and military command structure to a civilian government department.
Through the years the incarceration of offenders has been relied upon as the dominant sentence option to address the objectives of punishment. Research has shown that the above-mentioned approach no longer matches the current lifestyle.
Correctional centres, not only in South Africa but across the board, are faced with the same challenge. This is of course not the problem of the Department of Correctional Services alone, but that of the entire justice system. It is therefore obligatory for the justice system to join hands with society in accordance with the White Paper on Correctional Services in South Africa.
The ANC felt that correcting the behaviour of offenders is the responsibility of society as a whole. Hence, in Polokwane, we resolved that alternative mechanisms to incarceration be introduced for dealing with offenders who are deserving cases.