CORRECTIONAL Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has correctly raised concern about the growing number of young people in the country's overcrowded prisons.

CORRECTIONAL Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has correctly raised concern about the growing number of young people in the country's overcrowded prisons.

This is an ongoing problem highlighted many times by the inspecting judge of prisons - to no avail - and inexplicably allowed to snowball by the previous incumbent.

In its 2003 annual report the parliamentary monitoring group recommended that "children were better off when crowded into these correctional (youth) facilities than if they were in the prisons".

Though the Department of Correctional Services was asked to take corrective steps, the problem persists with no solution in sight.

We place our trust in Mapisa-Nqakula's new broom to sweep clean in areas that have lain in neglect as a consequence of a sheer lack of decisive action.