Thank you, Chairperson. Correctional Services has, over the past few years, reoriented itself away from warehousing inmates towards rehabilitating and reintegrating offenders. This reorientation could not happen countrywide and overnight. Accordingly, 36 centres of excellence were identified in which handpicked staff would roll out the new orientation.
The Pollsmoor female prison is such a centre of excellence. It is, therefore, inexplicable that a clearly disturbed inmate was chained to a grill for two days without psychological treatment and in contravention of the provisions of the Correctional Services Act, before setting her cell on fire and killing herself.
It is inexplicable that despite all the security checks available, drugs and weapons continue to be smuggled into the prisons. It is inexplicable that collusion by staff and lapses of security lead to the death of, or injury to, staff members even in centres of excellence. It is also inexplicable that a prison construction programme announced in 2002 has not yet gotten off the ground.
Of the four new prisons promised in 2002, only one will be built by the state over the next three years. The other three will be built by the private sector following a model called the "project finance model". The exact details of this model and the possible long-term risks to the state are not yet available, yet we are being asked to approve money that will be expended on these projects. This is clearly unsatisfactory. For all these reasons, we will be voting against the budget.