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Parolees to be electronically tagged

HANDS ON: S'bu Ndebele
HANDS ON: S'bu Ndebele

A HUNDRED-and-thirty-two inmates currently serving life sentences are electronically monitored.

This was revealed yesterday by correctional services national commissioner Tom Moyane, who said a pilot project of electronic monitoring was launched last year. As a result, in the next few years 10000 parolees would also be electronically tagged.

"There have been zero, nada incidents since launching the pilot project," he said.

By the end of the current financial year, 500 parolees are expected to be captured and monitored on the electronic system.

Moyane said the implications of overcrowding in prisons as well as the high costs to detain a prisoner were drivers in promoting the use of tagging.

"Just to keep an inmate, it's R9876 per month. This [system] is R3379 per month, so it's cost effective. Besides, it will help the judiciary to apply their minds that they do not have to give custodial sentences but non-custodial, because we can account for any offender at any time but it will also help with overcrowding," Moyane said.

Correctional Services Minister S'bu Ndebele said prisons only had the bed capacity for 119000 inmates, but there were 152514 prisoners currently in prisons.

In 1995 there were 400 inmates serving life sentences. The number had, however, increased to 11000.

"It's a big problem. Part of the introduction of this electronic monitoring really would be at the hands of the judiciary [to decide on]. so we are not clogging up the 119000 space that we've got," Ndebele said.

He reiterated the government's commitment to rehabilitation in the form of educating each inmate in literacy and numeracy. He said this year 10393 offenders had registered for Adult Basic Education and Training levels one to four. Added to this, the offender labour programme was increasing in numbers.

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