The inability of the Department of Correctional Services to guard the entire perimeter of prisons has been exploited by inmates and community members to smuggle contraband into the facilities.
Head of Department Marothi Thobakgale appeared before the Madlanga Commission, where he painted a worrying picture of criminality in the country’s jails.
Thobakgale cited the size of prisons as making it nearly impossible to guard their perimeters around the clock.
“The integrated security system is a force multiplier. And it reduces reliance on, as I indicated in the statement, manual processes. For instance, in cases where you don’t have the integrated security system, you have to rely on towers. Now it means you have to deploy members to man the towers.
“At the same time, you also have to rely on patrols. Now it depends on the number of vehicles you have and the number of officials that can operate such vehicles. In some instances, inmates and members of the public know because our correctional facilities cover quite an involved radius.
“They know that if a patrol van goes in that direction, it will take about 30 minutes to come back to this direction again. And those gaps are gaps that provide opportunities,” said Thobakgale.
The commissioner also revealed that officers are deeply involved in the smuggling of contraband.
Thobakgale identified 15 newly built prisons as being almost impenetrable.
“The first aspect is to ensure that we do not have integrated security systems where they are in facilities and they are not meant. Because they are meant by private security service providers. So if contracts lapse, we make it a point that before the lapse, there is a contract in place because there needs to be continuous maintenance and operation. Of course, operation is done by our officials.
“The second aspect is those that do not have, we try to implement a process of fitting. So, for instance, we’re talking here about 15 new-generation facilities. They are running those ones. Since 2021, gradually, we have implemented the fitting process to 35 out of the 228.
“So every year we add, given what we have from the budget allocation that we would have received from Treasury,” he said.
Thobakgale said the department’s plans were completely dependent on the National Treasury allocating funds each year.