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Zuma Promises to Improve Prison Conditions

Most South African prisons are overcrowded, unhygienic, lack adequate health care facilities and do little to rehabilitate inmates, according to the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons (JIOP) 2006/7 annual report. The situation in some facilities is so dire prisoners are expected to eat, sleep and spend almost their whole day in a space the size of an average office desk. "Only 67 out of the 237 prisons in our country are filled to the capacity for which they were designed; the other prisons are all overcrowded," reads the document, tabled at a meeting of Parliament's Correctional Services Portfolio Committee on Tuesday. There were 161 674 prisoners in custody, housed in 237 prisons that were designed to accommodate a total of 115 327 inmates - a "national average occupation level" of 140.2%. Of this prisoner total 158 115 were male and 3 550 female. The reports says that in prisons reporting critical levels of overcrowding, "prisoners often have less than 1.2 square metres, the size of an average office table in which they must sleep, eat and spend 23 hours per day". According to the report the "norms applied in South African prisons for floor space per prisoner" is 3.5 square metres for communal cells and 5.5 square metres for single cells. A table included in the document shows 21 so called "correctional centres" are more than 200% full and two - one in Thohoyandou and the other in Umtata - over 300% full. The report notes most heads of prisons could not supply accurate statistics

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