This does not mean that victims have a final say, but their voice is critical for paroling.
A matter I want to address and contextualise is that of overcrowding at our correctional facilities. By December of the 2008-09 financial year, 64 870 awaiting-trial detainees had been diverted from our system, and 49 072 offenders had also benefited from our parole and conversion processes. In spite of these measures, the number of awaiting-trial detainees continues to increase, primarily due to the fact that 77% of awaiting-trial detainees do not have bail and cannot benefit from these alternatives. The other contributing factor is that there is an increasing number of offenders serving sentences in excess of 10 years, especially the 10-to-15-year bracket. This is also worsened by an increase of people serving lifelong sentences in our facilities. The effect of these realities is that we experience a significant burden on our ability to manage overcrowding. We are currently exploring the introduction of electronic tagging monitoring for parole and correctional supervision as a possible solution and will be considering the business case for this later.