A WELL-BEHAVED and hard-working prisoner can walk away from a life behind bars with up to R20,000 in his pocket to start a new life without the temptation to steal or rob to survive.

This is if the criminal is willing to go through rehabilitation programmes and is lucky enough to be hired by a trading entity soon to be established by the Department of Correctional Services, said Minister Sbu Ndebele.

Ndebele said this yesterday in Boksburg at a colloquium with various stakeholders to discuss overcrowding, alternative sentencing as well as the draft White Paper on Remand Detention Management in South Africa.

The trading entity will help expand the enterprises already being run from select prisons around the country. They offer agricultural products and furniture to government departments and the public for sale.

Ndebele explained that the prisoners would be paid for their work but would only get the money when they leave prison.

He said he believed that the skills and work experience acquired, together with the cash, would go a long a way to ensure that once offenders walk out of prison, they did not return.

Ndebele also announced that 20 new schools would be built from scratch by offenders and those "workers" would be paid.

He said this move, together with community dialogues where the department is looking to make restorative justice a formal programme of the department, would go a long way in reducing the burden on the prison system.

"The victim of crime matters. Part of rehabilitation is the opportunity for the offender to say sorry and for the victim to be able to forgive," Ndebele said.

He said communities had to start playing a role if the cycle of crime was to be broken. Ndebele will be in Secunda, Mpumalanga, next week for a community dialogue.

- moengk@sowetan.co.za