RECOMMENDATIONS

The most primary recommendation that comes to emerge from our examination of South African prisons is that the South African Department of Correctional Services bring the reality of prison conditions into line with the newly enacted laws and regulations. Efforts should be made to bring the amending legislation into effect and to see that the newly eliminated disciplinary measures are indeed no longer used and that the other new provisions of the law are also adhered to. The racial integration of the prison system needs to be speeded up. Furthermore, conditions in the prisons that historically housed only black prisoners must be improved to match the standards that applied to institutions reserved for white inmates until the recent reforms.

In addition, we wish to make several specific recommendations, noted below. The majority of these relate to policy changes and do not require major financial investments. The one area where realizing our recommendations would require significant expenditure relates to education and job training. We consider this an investment that would pay off in the wider context of South African society because it would help prisoners to find meaningful employment upon their release and thus help prevent them from committing crimes and returning to prison in the future.

Benefits

The "privilege" system should be abolished. All inmates should be entitled to contact visits, allowed access to TV and press, given unlimited use of the library, permitted to write poetry and practice hobbies. Restrictions on these rights should be used only as disciplinary measures, for specified infractions and for limited periods of time.
Cases in which prisoners may be granted certain benefits at the discretion of prison officers should be reduced to a minimum. All such cases are opportunities for abuse.

Treatment of Juveniles

Juveniles should never be housed in adult institutions.
Juveniles should never be transported together with adult prisoners.
In institutions for juveniles, housing in separate age groups should always be a rule to avoid situations in which ten-year-olds might be housed with twenty-one-year-olds.

Abuse and Punishment

All cases of alleged beatings of prisoners by guards or of collaboration by guards in the gang system should be thoroughly investigated, and staff members found guilty of applying unauthorized force should be disciplined.
All statements by prisoners that they are in danger, as a result of gang activity or otherwise, should be taken with the utmost seriousness; inmates at risk should be removed from the cells in which they face that danger, to be placed in single cells whenever possible, if that is their request.
There should be a thorough, independent investigation of the 1991 riot in Barberton prison, the six deaths and the subsequent alleged assaults against prisoners.
The six-month limitation period applicable to court actions against the police or prison service for damages for assault should be raised to the usual three-year limitation period for civil actions.
The provision making it a disciplinary infraction for prisoners to lodge a false complaint should be removed from the regulations.
Restraints should never be applied as a disciplinary measure; when used to subdue a prisoner, they should only be applied as long as strictly necessary, and never for more than a few hours.
Collective punishment should never be applied.
Bans on reading should never be used as a disciplinary measure.

Access to Information

All prisoners, including pre-trial detainees and unsentenced prisoners, should have unrestricted access to reading material.
Every inmate should be issued a written copy in plain language of all rules applying to the prison where he or she is housed, including the content of orders of the Corrections Department (also called Departmental Orders), as well as the relevant sections of the Correctional Services Act and Regulations. This guide should be issued in several South African languages, and each prison should have a system for notifying illiterate prisoners about the applicable rules of behavior.

Police Custody

Prisoners, whether sentenced or pre-trial, should never be held in police lockups for more than 48 hours.
Time spent in pre-trial detention should automatically count toward the sentence imposed if the accused is convicted.

Cells, Food and Exercise

Cell space should be used evenly within each prison to avoid creating artificial overcrowding.
All cells should be equipped with basic furniture such as beds, chairs, tables and cabinets or shelves for private belongings.
Inmates should always be provided with three meals a day. Meal times should be spaced evenly during the day, to avoid excessively long periods between the last and the first meal of the day.
All prisoners should have at a minimum, an hour of daily exercise.

Visits and Representation

The provision making it an infraction to discuss prison conditions during visits should be removed from prison regulations.
The restrictions on subjects that may be discussed or documents that may be handed over during meetings with a legal representative should be removed.
Paralegals and trainee attorneys should be allowed equal access to prisoners as fully qualified attorneys or advocates.
Efforts should be made to house prisoners as near to their area of habitual residence as possible, and all requests for transfers should be sympathetically assessed.
For prisoners whose relatives must travel in order to visit, it should be possible to combine several shorter visits into a longer one or to conduct several visits in just a few days when visiting relatives are staying in the area where the prison is located.
Telephone calls should not count as visits.

Training and Study

Prisoners of all races and both sexes should have equal access to vocational training and to the most desirable prison jobs.
Vocational training of a meaningful nature should be progressively expanded, ideally to be available to all prisoners, and especially to those deemed to be most likely to be involved in gang violence.
Prisoners should be encouraged to study not only on the most basic level; efforts should be made to facilitate access to correspondence courses for all prisoners who are willing to study.

Warders' Performance

Cases in which members and officers of the recently-legalized Police and Prison Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) have been disciplined, demoted or fired by the Department of Correctional Services should be investigated by an independent arbitrator, with power to order compensation and/or reinstatement if the action taken against them is found to be unwarranted.
Military ranks and uniforms, and military-type discipline among prison warders, should be abolished.
Training for prison warders should place emphasis on conflict resolution and respect for prisoners' rights rather than solely the enforcement of discipline.
All alleged cases of abuse of the parole system by prison staff should be fully investigated and those involved disciplined. The criteria for early release or parole should be clearly explained to prisoners and uniformly applied across the system.

Integrated Reform

An effort should be made to integrate reforms in the prison system with reforms in the general criminal justice system, so that, for example, efforts to reduce the prison population do not result in longer sentences being imposed by magistrates.

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February 1994