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<<previous | index | next>> V. DISCIPLINARY MEASURESOne of the features of South African prisons that most strikes a visitor is the intense discipline inmates are living under. During our 1992 visits, in prison after prison, cell after cell, our representatives were greeted by rows of inmates, silently holding their I.D. cards just below their faces. At the time of our visits in 1993, there was less overt regimentation, but in many cases prisoners were clearly afraid of staff. Many inmates indicated their outright unwillingness to be interviewed, stating that they did not want to get in trouble; those who did agree to talk to us often expressed their fear of subsequent reprisals. Despite the obvious emphasis on discipline, in none of the prisons visited were we able to ascertain that disciplinary rules were available to prisoners. When asked, prisoners told us that they never saw them. In Durban, prison officials told us that written rules were not issued to prisoners, though in other prisons we were assured that rules were available despite prisoners' denials. Section 85 of the Correctional Services Act states that the rules applicable to prisoners should be made available to every prisoner immediately after admission, or conveyed to him orally.44 At our request, the Department of Correctional Services mailed to us the bilingual (English and Afrikaans) "Guide for Prisoners" containing excerpts from the Prisons Act and Prisons Regulations (as the legislation was previously known), but we never encountered a prisoner who had actually seen this document, and many expressed confusion as to the rules applying to them. Furthermore, the guide did not include any material from Departmental Orders, which contain many of the details of the rules governing daily prison life. On a few occasions, we saw posted signs informing inmates or visitors what was prohibited, what were the limits on the money in possession of inmates in each privilege group or the number of photographs an inmate might have in his or her cell. In addition to their ignorance of the centrally authorized rules governing everyday life in the prisons, some inmates complained they did not know how the "privilege" classification system worked, or that they did not believe they should be under a specific privilege classification and could not get an explanation from the authorities as to why they had been allocated to one level rather than another. AUTHORIZED MEASURES Sanctions that may be applied to prisoners for disciplinary infractions are set out in the Correctional Services Act and in regulations made by the Minister of Correctional Services under the act.45 As an overall rule, it is stated in the regulations that "discipline and order shall be maintained with firmness but in no greater measure than is necessary for security purposes and an orderly community life in a prison;" and that "the aim in treating the prisoner shall at all times be to promote his self-respect and to cultivate a sense of responsibility in him."46 Despite these sentiments, South African prisons have historically authorized exceptionally brutal punishment, in comparison to international standards. A wide range of petty disciplinary infractions are criminalized under the legislation, and were punishable by measures going well beyond accepted norms, including dietary and corporal punishment. However, several of the harshest disciplinary sanctions, which were still lawful at the time of our 1992 and 1993 visits, were legally removed with the June 23, 1993 amendment to the Correctional Services Act. The amendments do not come into effect until March 1994, and the punishments to be abolished were still being applied at the end of 1993. (See further, the chapter on "Legislative Changes"). Prior to the changes, offenses set out in the act itself were punishable, after trial by a magistrate, by a sentence of up to six months' (additional) imprisonment, or by "solitary confinement in an isolation cell with or without light labour for a period not exceeding forty-two days, twenty-eight days of which may be ordered to be passed on reduced diet." Such trials would usually take place in specially designated courtrooms in the prison itself; only more serious offenses, also crimes under legislation not concerned specifically with offenses in prison, would be tried in a court outside the prison. The prisoner had a right to legal representation in either case; however, almost no prisoners in fact have legal assistance if they are charged with further offenses (80 to 90 percent of those charged with criminal offenses outside prison are unrepresented at trial). Punishments for contraventions of the regulations alone could be imposed by any designated commissioned officer, without a right to appeal his decision. Possible sentences that could be imposed, and which were also available to the magistrate, included the deprivation of one or more meals on any day; corporal punishment "not exceeding six strokes" for a male prisoner under forty years of age; and solitary confinement for up to thirty days, again with or without dietary restrictions. The authorized thirty days of dietary punishment for violations of the regulations consisted of eighteen days of "spare diet," six days of "reduced diet," and six days of full diet.47 A spare diet was described in detail by the regulations as "200 grammes of maize meal, twice daily, boiled in water without salt, and 15 grammes of protone soup powder, boiled in 570 millilitres of water, once daily."48 Reduced diet, according to the regulations, consisted of "half of the prescribed daily ration."49 The twenty-eight days of reduced diet imposable by a magistrate were subject to the limitation that no more than fourteen days of reduced diet could be served in one stretch, and fourteen days had to intervene between each period of reduced diet.50 During our visits in 1992 and early 1993 we saw punishment cells in use in a number of prisons. Most were single cells, with no furniture except a toilet and sink, and only mats on the floor to sleep on. Prisoners in punishment were not allowed any books except the Bible. Many of those we interviewed who were being punished by solitary confinement were also subject to dietary punishment, making the prisoner go hungry for a day, or subjecting him to the more elaborate regime set out for longer periods. Offenses being punished included swearing, being found in possession of marijuana, or fighting with fellow prisoners. Statistics given to Parliament by the Department of Correctional Services concerning disciplinary measures indicate that dietary punishment was frequently used as a sanction in the South African prison system until the recent legislative changes. However, its use did appear to be declining, even before the reforms. As a result of court supervision which severely restricted its application, corporal punishment was little used in recent years. The figures are shown in the table below:51
The amendments introduced in June 1993 removed the sanctions of corporal and dietary punishment and solitary confinement with or without restraint, as disciplinary measures, bringing South Africa into line with the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules.52 Additional imprisonment of up to six months may still be imposed by a magistrate for contraventions of the act and, in substitution for the sentence of solitary confinement, a magistrate will be able to sentence a prisoner "to pay partial or full compensation for any damage caused by the misdemeanour of which he has been found guilty." The imposition of disciplinary sanctions for contravention only of prison regulations is given to an "institutional committee," consisting of an unspecified number of warders designated for that task; rather than, as before, to a single commissioned officer. After a hearing (at which a right to legal representation is specifically excluded), the committee may order that the prisoner be deprived for up to two months of "one or more privileges or indulgences."53 A change in the general classification of the prisoner under the privilege system is specifically excluded as a disciplinary measure; and the prisoner is "at all times [to] be entitled to maintain his family ties."54 Despite these reforms, the privilege system itself and the general treatment of all amenities, barring those essential for the physical survival of the prisoner, as "privileges or indulgences," allow an unacceptable level of discretion to prison guards in determining the living conditions of those under their supervision. Prisoners may be deprived as a disciplinary measure of study opportunities, reading material, pens and paper, personal possessions such as watches, even (as we were told by prisoners in isolation cells in Kroonstad) belts and blankets. Under Section 22 of the Correctional Services Act, before the recent amendments, it was explicitly stated that privileges could be withdrawn from any prisoner "notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any law," and "without furnishing any reason and without hearing such prisoner or any other person." Although this section was amended in 1993 to restrict the withdrawal of privileges to cases in which "it is in the interests of the administration of prisons," it is not clear what difference this rewording will make in practice.55 The long list of disciplinary infractions for which a prisoner may be punished under the regulations remains unchanged by the recent amendments to the act. The list covers a range of misdemeanors, some potentially serious but many trivial. They include willfully giving false replies to questions put by a warder; disobeying lawful commands given by a warder; "petty assault;" swearing; singing, whistling, or making "unnecessary noise;" shirking work "in any manner," or acting "in any manner ... contrary to good order and discipline."56 Perhaps most troublingly, the list also includes lodging "false, frivolous or malicious complaints," or making "false and malicious accusations against a member [of the prison staff], a fellow prisoner or other person."57 In the same way as the now-removed provisions in the Correctional Services Act that made it illegal to make any false statement about prisons had a chilling effect on the press and essentially eliminated any coverage of prisons from South African media, these rules discourage prisoners from making any complaints, either about conditions in general or against staff members. Prisoners and ex-prisoners we interviewed frequently stated that they were punished for complaining to warders, or for making requests such as for a transfer to a different prison. The reforms to disciplinary measures introduced by the Correctional Services Amendment Act of 1993 are welcome and long overdue. They are not yet in effect, and will be introduced gradually by executive order. The reforms relating to punishment for disciplinary offenses are to become effective in March 1994. However, we observed during our visits a confusion between the use of sanctions such as solitary confinement for punishment, and the use of these sanctions as a means of "restraining" violent or otherwise abusive prisoners, that may allow their continuing use effectively to punish prisoners even when the recent reforms come into effect.58 Section 80 of the Correctional Services Act allows the head of a prison to order a prisoner to be "confined in an isolation cell, and, in addition or in the alternative, if necessary, to be placed in irons or subjected to some other approved means of mechanical restraint for such period as may be considered absolutely necessary, but not exceeding one month." The period of such isolation or restraint may be extended for up to three months by the Commissioner of Correctional Services, and indefinitely by the Minister. In addition, Sections 78 and 79 (as amended), state that prisoners may be "segregated" in isolation cells if it is "desirable in the interests of the administration of justice," or in order to ensure that other disciplinary measures can be "effectively applied." Segregation in this way is "not to be deemed to be solitary confinement" for the purposes of punishment.59 We interviewed prisoners held in isolation cells in several prisons, including prisoners subject to restraint, who were completely unaware of any distinction between isolation as a punishment and isolation as a means of ensuring good order in the prison. From the point of view of the individual prisoner, the difference between the two types of isolation is purely academic. Moreover, there appears to be a similar confusion in the minds of at least some of the warders. In Brandvlei maximum security prison, for example, a warder questioned about the status of prisoners being held in single cells stated that the prisoners were in isolation because they had committed disciplinary offenses. When asked how long their sentences were, the warder stated that there was no maximum, the length of time spent in isolation depending on the behavior of the prisoner. Solitary confinement described as a punishment was being viewed not as a fixed sentence but as something conditional upon the prisoner's behavior; meanwhile, the theoretical time limits provided under the act, either for punishment or for restraint, were apparently not regarded as binding. Two recent inquests into deaths in prison confirm this confusion and the serious consequences it may have. In January 1993, a magistrate conducting an inquest into the death in June 1989 of Carol Anne Meyers, a twenty-year-old woman, found that her death was caused by the "irresponsible and inhuman" conduct of prison officers applying restraint under Section 80. Meyers died as a result of injuries incurred from being kept in a straitjacket for twenty-three hours by warders in Pollsmoor prison. She had been placed in a straitjacket after she had threatened to commit suicide. The court found that prison regulations had been disregarded in applying the restraint, and also that warders had regarded the restraint as a punishment. Both officers involved were promoted after the death occurred. Similarly, an inquest into the death in June 1991 of Johannes Oor, discovered hanged in his cell eight days after he had been ordered confined to one month's isolation, found that Section 80 had been misapplied.60 The Minister of Correctional Services stated in March 1993 that straitjackets had been used sixty-one times in South African prisons during 1992.61 However, later in the year it was announced that the use of straitjackets would be drastically curtailed.62 Contrary to the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules, collective punishment for group misbehavior is authorized by Departmental Order.63 During the course of our visits we received several reports of collective punishment. In Modderbee prison, for example, inmates told us that if there was a fight, everyone was punished, even those who were not involved. The usual punishment was lockdown in the cells, with only thirty minutes of exercise a week. Similarly, we were told by the Barberton prison inmates that the Sunday soccer game was frequently cancelled if anyone misbehaved. In addition, soccer games were stopped in one section of Barberton altogether at the time of our visit because of gang-related violence. All prisoners in the section, regardless of whether they had engaged in gang activities, were affected by this sanction. In the Kroonstad male prison, inmates reported that in November 1992 two prisoners threw porridge on the floor because they wanted to see an officer to report a complaint. All prisoners present in the room were punished with the loss of three meals, reduction of blankets and were placed in restraints. UNAUTHORIZED MEASURES As mentioned above, most prisoners were not eager to provide testimonies as to the use of punishment and indicated their fear of reprisals. Some, however, did agree to talk while in prison; ex-prisoners also spoke to us about the unauthorized use of punishment. In addition, some prison guards gave testimony, outside the prison walls, about the behavior of their fellow warders. In some cases, we were told of authorized means of punishment extended to an illegal degree or used for illegitimate purposes. On at least two occasions, we received testimonies of solitary confinement with reduced diet being used for up to sixty days, despite the legal limit of thirty or forty-two, depending on the infraction.64 In Barberton, prisoners complained about the use of isolation cells as punishment for requesting transfers to different prisons, or for making complaints about the food. In the Kroonstad male prison we received two separate yet similar testimonies from black prisoners who were in solitary confinement for having a fight. Each of them had fought with a white inmate. They alleged that the white prisoners were not in punishment. Although the threat of reclassification within the privilege system was not authorized as a disciplinary measure at the time of our visits, we received several reports of cases in which reclassification of prisoners under the privilege system or by security status had in fact been threatened or carried out. Moreover, since each prisoner is subject to potential reclassification every six months, it is not clear that the addition of a specific prohibition of reclassification of a prisoner under the privilege system as a disciplinary measure, introduced by the 1993 amendments, will mean that reclassification will not continue to be used effectively as a punishment. It will still be open to warders to threaten a prisoner with downgrading of privilege group in retaliation for disciplinary offenses. Many prisoners and ex-prisoners alleged that they were subject to reprisals for making complaints. In Barberton, a prisoner complained that he had been transferred to the maximum prison from the medium after going on a hunger strike to protest the failure to respond to his requests for a transfer. His books and writing materials were confiscated, and he spent some time in the isolation cells. On January 22, 1993 he was assaulted by a warder, in front of a superior officer, while asking about his security classification. The prisoner made a complaint about this treatment, and was told that it was up to the commanding officer of the prison to decide whether to bring in the police to lay a charge against the warder concerned. At the date of our visit, one month later, no action had been taken other than to take a statement from the prisoner for the purposes of the disciplinary committee. Another prisoner facing further charges for attempted suicide stated that his injuries had been caused by warders who had pushed his hands through a window after he had complained about the behavior of a member of prison staff. In several other testimonies, inmates described acts of violence inflicted by prison officials. In the Modderbee prison, inmates said that guards often beat prisoners in retaliation for infractions, real or imaginary, sometimes inflicting serious injuries. One inmate was beaten on February 16, a few days before our visit, for putting his clothes outside the cell window. A prisoner at Pollsmoor complained about an assault by a warder the previous October, and stated that no statement had ever been taken. In Modderbee prison, we interviewed juvenile prisoners who stated that the warders at the prison would sometimes assault them, and that they feared that the warders observing our consultations would assault them for talking to our representative. In Barberton we received numerous reports of staff assaults against prisoners, including beatings with a sjambok (rawhide whip) and beatings in isolation cells, as an additional punishment on top of solitary confinement. In Kroonstad male prison, we were also told about beatings in isolation cells. An ex-prisoner from Leeuwkop described a "seven-day punishment," in which a prisoner would be put in an isolation cell for one week and be assaulted every day. An ex-prisoner who had spent time in Groenpunt reported to us that he had been assaulted in August 1992 by the head of the prison after his father had threatened to bring a case against the prison in connection with another charge against the prisoner. He had been beaten with batons for forty-five minutes in an isolation cell, and had been told to plead guilty in the other case (which was eventually dropped). He had not taken any action as a result of the assault because he had only three months left to serve of his sentence and was afraid of causing trouble. He stated: "They assault you no matter what you do. If you are right, if you are wrong, they just assault you." Some testimonies regarding violence inflicted by prison staff members on inmates come from concerned staffers, often members of POPCRU, the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union. A Pollsmoor sergeant described an incident in which prisoners were beaten by staff members after the inmates had allegedly assaulted an officer. In a sworn affidavit provided to the prisoners' lawyers, the sergeant recounted the events that occurred on October 1, 1992 and stated: "I proceeded down to A Section [of the Maximum prison at Pollsmoor] where I witnessed seven or eight fellow warders (inter alia Warder Le Roux and Sergeant Langberg) repeatedly assaulting four or five prisoners who had allegedly been responsible for stabbing Warrant Officer Murray. In my assessment of the situation these assaults were unnecessary as by the time I arrived in A Section W/O Murray had been removed and weapons confiscated. The repeated assaults were excessive." In another affidavit, a different sergeant described his visit with one of the victims of the same incident: "Amongst the prisoners who have been placed in solitary confinement is John Odendaal. I have spoken to him and he informed me that he was assaulted. At the time when I spoke to him I noticed a large wound on the back of his head, which appeared to be recently inflicted. Prisoner Odendaal was also depressed and on the verge of bursting into tears when I spoke to him. He is quite a frail man and uses a walking stick to support a bad leg." It is certain that in the vast majority of cases warders who assault prisoners receive no punishment, nor the victim any compensation. Many prisoners stated to us that they had not even lodged an official complaint with the authorities if they had been assaulted, either fearing reprisals or believing that it was useless. In May 1992, the Minister of Correctional Services stated that 1,426 complaints against warders had been lodged by prisoners during 1991; sixty-three warders had been charged as a result of these complaints, and twenty-four had been found guilty of assault.65 In March 1993, the minister stated that 1,482 complaints of assault were lodged in 1992, six warders were convicted of criminal charges, and twenty-eight disciplined within the department.66 In May 1993, the minister gave official statistics for deaths in prison during 1992: according to the department, a total of 202 prisoners died, 140 of natural causes, thirty-six suicides, thirteen assaulted by fellow prisoners, and thirteen of various causes including drowning, falling from prison vehicles, and a prison accident.67 Although criminal prosecution of warders for assault is within the discretion of the authorities, a prisoner may independently bring a civil claim for damages against an individual warder and the prison service. One of the principal restrictions on bringing such actions are the extremely short limitation periods within which a claim must be brought under South African law. Under the Correctional Services Act, a prisoner must bring an action based on anything done to him in prison within six months of his release, and in any event not more than one year after the incident occurred.68 This provision seriously reduces the chances that a warder guilty of assault will ever be made accountable for his action. In any event, since most prisoners will seek legal advice only once they have been released, it restricts possible civil actions for damages to assaults taking place during the prisoner's last year in custody. MISTREATMENT OF PARTICIPANTS IN NON-VIOLENT PROTESTS As mentioned before, as a result of political agreements and also in an effort to relieve overcrowding, several amnesties were promulgated in South Africa, both for political and for nonpolitical prisoners. Many prisoners excluded from these releases engaged in protest actions, including hunger strikes. We received disturbing testimonies about the treatment afforded to participants in some of these fasts. In May 1991, after the expiration of the April 30 deadline for the release of political prisoners which had been agreed between the government and the ANC, a group of inmates of Barberton prison who claimed political status embarked on a hunger strike. The prison administration tried to put pressure on the strikers to end their protest. At one point, the guards took away all their clothing and other belongings and prisoners remained completely naked for an entire night. The next morning the clothes were returned and the prisoners were taken to the prison hospital and placed in the mortuary. The prisoner who provided the testimony to us said that he was very cold in the morgue. That inmate was released from prison after twenty-seven days of his hunger strike. Another prisoner participating in the same protest was taken to an outside hospital after eighteen days of a hunger strike. Until a visit from his lawyer, the prisoner alleged that he had been chained to his bed by his hands and his legs, and later by his hands only. As a result of this treatment of hunger-striking prisoners, the doctor who had been responsible for their treatment was investigated for malpractice by the South African Medical Council. In March 1993, the council found that there was insufficient evidence to justify a finding of malpractice. VIOLENCE IN THE AFTERMATH OF A PRISON RIOT The expectations and tensions related to anticipated releases of common crime prisoners led to a violent protest in Barberton in August 1991. Prisoners burned their cells in order, as one of the protest's participants explained to us in 1993, "to get attention." After the fire and the protest were subdued, six prisoners were dead. The official version is that they died in the fire. But several prisoners interviewed by us who said they witnessed the events stated that the six were killed by the prison staff. As one prisoner stated to us: "They were brutally murdered by the prison members accompanied by the top officers. They trapped them with their boots on their stomachs, and beat them and pulled them along the floor to B section hospital. When they reached the hospital, some of them were still alive." Another described the incident as a "festival of bestial brutality and terror." One prisoner, who was being held in an isolation cell at his own request, stated that he had been in the cell where the prisoners had died. He stated that one of the prison officers had used a hose to drive the prisoners out of the toilet area of the cell, where they were sheltering from the fire that they had lit, rather than spraying the fire itself. As a result the six prisoners had died. Another prisoner stated that when he and others were charged with a further offense as a result of being participants in this action, they had been assaulted by warders. When they asked to give a statement to the police about this assault and identified the warders involved, the prison authorities offered them a "settlement" by which they would be given remission of sentence and desirable work assignments if they would drop the charges. He had refused to do so. Later in the year, after our visit to Barberton, fifteen prisoners, including several that we had spoken to, were charged with murder and manslaughter in connection with the deaths of the six prisoners during the riot. A pro deo counsel was appointed by the state on their behalf, as is the custom for capital offenses. However, no full and independent inquiry has been held into the events leading to the deaths, and no disciplinary action has been taken against any of the warders alleged by the prisoners to have been involved in the incident. 44 This is in line with the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules, which provide, at Rule 35(1), that "Every prisoner on admission shall be provided with written information about the regulations governing the treatment of prisoners of his category, the disciplinary requirements of the institution, the authorized methods of seeking information and making complaints, and all such other matters as are necessary to enable him to understand both his rights and his obligations and to adapt himself to the life of the institution." In Hassim v. Officer Commanding, Robben Island; Venkatrathnam v. Officer Commanding, Robben Island 1973 3 SA 462 (C), the judge stated that "It is important that a prisoner know what his rights and duties are and it is therefore right and proper that he should have made available to him both the provisions of the Act and the regulations promulgated thereunder, which relate to the `treatment and conduct of prisoners.'" 45 The rules for trial of offenses under the act or the regulations, and the types of punishment that may be imposed on prisoners, are set out in sections 51 and 54 of the Correctional Services Act. Section 94 sets out the Minister's powers to make regulations. 46 Correctional Services Regulations, regulation 98(1). This wording echoes that of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules, which provide, at Rule 27, that "Discipline and order shall be maintained with firmness, but with no more restriction than is necessary for safe custody and well-ordered community life." 47 Correctional Services Act, Section 54(e), now amended. 48 Correctional Services Regulations, Regulation 101(b), now amended. 49 Ibid, Regulation 101(c), now amended. 50 Ibid, Regulation 51(2)(b), now amended. 51 SA Barometer, Volume 6, Number 19, September 25, 1992, and SA Conflict Monitor, (Johannesburg) March 1993, quoting statistics given by the Minister of Correctional Services to Parliament. 52 Rule 31 of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules provides that: "Corporal punishment, punishment by placing in a dark cell, and all cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments shall be completely prohibited as punishments for disciplinary offences." Rule 32(1) permits punishment by reduction of diet provided "the medical officer has examined the prisoner and certified in writing that he is fit to sustain it." 53 Under the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules, Rule 30(2) states that "No prisoner shall be punished unless he has been informed of the offence alleged against him and given a proper opportunity of presenting his defence. The competent authority shall conduct a thorough examination of the case." 54 Correctional Services Amendment Act 1993, Sections 16 and 17, amending Sections 51 and 54 of the principal act. 55 Section 8, Correctional Services Amendment Act, 1993, amending Section 22 of the Correctional Services Act, 1959. 56 Correctional Services Regulations, Regulation 99, (a), (b), (e), (i), (q), and (u). 57 Correctional Services Regulations, Regulation 99 (o) and (p). 58 In Hassim v. Officer Commanding, Robben Island; Venkatrathnam v. Officer Commanding, Robben Island 1973 3 SA 462 (C), a leading case on prison conditions, the judge emphasized that it was of "fundamental importance" to maintain the distinction between "solitary confinement" used as a punishment, and "complete segregation" used to maintain "good order and discipline" in the prison. See Van Zyl Smit, Prison Law and Practice, p.70. Regulation 102 of the Correctional Services Regulations also states that restraint "shall in no circumstances whatsoever be used as a punishment." Both the case law and the regulation conform to the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules, which provide, at Rule 33, that
Rule 34 provides that
59 Regulation 118 of the Correctional Services Regulations authorizes the segregation of prisoners by the Commissioner "when a prisoner has a bad or harmful effect on another prisoner or is responsible for the deterioration of the relationship between a member and a prisoner and their attitudes towards each other, or causes unrest or dissatisfaction among other prisoners or incites other prisoners to submit trivial or untrue complaints and representations or incites or influences other prisoners to disregard or contravene any command or instruction or tries to do or bring about any of the aforementioned, or has attempted to escape, or when there are reasonable grounds for believing that he is planning to escape, or when such prisoner has again been taken into custody after escape from prison or other lawful detention, or becomes violent or adopts a threatening or aggressive attitude towards a member or temporary warder or any other prisoner or person, or conducts himself or acts in any manner which conflicts with the good order and discipline of the prison." 60 Donald Zake, "Death jacket: Still no action," South, (Cape Town), February 13 to 17, 1993; Sandy Liebenberg, "Protecting people's rights even behind prison bars," Weekly Mail Supplement, June 18 to 24, 1993. 61 SA Conflict Monitor, March 1993. 62 On August 30, 1993, the Department of Correctional Services announced that in future straitjackets would be fitted after examinations of a prisoner by a doctor and psychiatrist, and that a prisoner subject to such restraint would be examined at least every hour. SA Conflict Monitor, August 1993. 63 The order states, "When group punishment is necessitated to maintain sound discipline due to the actions or behavior of a group of prisoners, if it is impossible to identify the guilty among them, the Commanding Officer may order that all or some privileges or indulgences are to be withdrawn for at most 72 hours." DOB V(3)(k)(iv); see also Van Zyl Smit, Prison Law and Practice pp. 194-5. Collective punishment is contrary to the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules. Rules 27 to 32 set out standards applying to punishment, which provide for procedures for individuals to be heard and given an opportunity to state a defense in every case. 64 In commenting on our draft report, the Department of Correctional Services stated that it can happen that a prisoner can receive two different sentences of solitary confinement with dietary punishment for two different offenses, totalling more than thirty days. In such cases, however, an interval of at least fourteen days, or as directed by the medical officer, is prescribed between the serving of each sentence. 65 SA Barometer, Volume 6, No. 9, September 25, 1992. 66 SA Conflict Monitor, March 1993. 67 SA Conflict Monitor, May 1993 68 Correctional Services Act, section 90. In addition, one month's notice in writing must be given to the defendant before the action is commenced, reducing the limit to an effective five months.
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