Hon Shiceka, community service provides offenders with opportunities to give back to those they have harmed. As I have said just now, when they do those things for the community they are giving back something which has a restorative effect on offenders, their victims and the community.
Officials working at community corrections offices supervise these offenders, who render community service at various community institutions around the country. In so far as the people who are doing community service all over the country are concerned, we have big and small names. If I were to mention some of those names you would know them, but I am not going to do that. These institutions where offenders carry out community service assisting with cleaning, etc, include, inter alia, public hospitals; clinics; municipalities at local government; police stations; welfare organisations; old age homes, for instance in Gugulethu; and homes for people with disabilities, for example at an orphanage in Nqgeleni. They do not get payment for this as it is part of their community service.
Hospices and zoological gardens can make use of community services. So, even communities can ask: "Can we ask offenders to clean the graveyards in the communities where we live?" We will oblige you in that, because they are there to do exactly that.
Communities are also beneficiaries of the work done by offenders within their communities. Some of these community service projects include cleaning parks in places that have parks, general maintenance, gardening - but do not ask them to do gardening in your own home because we are talking about community service and not gardening services in people's private homes. They cannot even do gardening for me - only general administrative and clerical work and painting. We have renovated and painted a school in Cala, in Manzimdaka. The offenders have totally renovated and repainted that school.
We are rendering these services with the assistance of our partners such as Nicro, Khulisa and many other faith-based and community-based organisations.
One last point to be made is that research has been commissioned by the Institute of Security Studies to inform the consideration of a system to monitor re-offending in South Africa and this was done by the Department of Correctional Services. We get complaints about re-offending and abscondment by some of these people out there.
We are trying to find out what the problem is, how many of them are involved and what makes them re-offend and abscond from the system. So, those are the things that we are doing to make sure that the system works. Thanks.