3. Context 3.1 The Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS) in its 2007/08 Annual Report identified a number of challenges prevalent in South Africa's correctional system. Chief amongst these is chronic prison overcrowding: the 237 operating correctional centres in South Africa were designed to accommodate 114 559 offenders, but at the end of January 2008 were approximately 45% overcrowded, accommodating 165 987 offenders, the bulk of whom were remand detainees. Overcrowding, coupled with, amongst others, the fact that most of the centres pre- date 1994, and were designed to merely imprison, means that implementing programmes necessary to promote rehabilitation and social- reintegration as envisioned in the White Paper on Corrections is near impossible. Prisons built to "warehouse" offenders do not lend themselves to the splitting up of offenders into manageable units, bringing about security challenges, and impeding service delivery. 3.2 The centres identified for the Committee's first site visits were selected because they provided the opportunity to contrast the old "Apartheid" style warehouse-type correctional centres, and the newer more modern centres designed with the principles of unit management in mind. Pollsmoor, the older of the two centres was approximately 75% overcrowded at the time of the visit, and Members experienced first hand how overcrowding impacted on the DCS' service delivery to inmates. The Medium A centre at Malmesbury on the other hand is a Centre of Excellence (CoE) that at the time of the visit was only overcrowded by 10 inmates and illustrated the positive impact unit management had on the delivery of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, as well as on the maintenance of discipline and security.