Plans to build public-private jails aborted

THE Department of Correctional Services has cancelled its plans to build four public-private partnerships prisons

This was announced by Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula at a post-cabinet briefing in Pretoria yesterday.

"Based upon an analysis of existing PPP arrangements within the department, a review of the four new PPP found that government is paying approximately R1.5-billion over a 15-year period for capital costs on a building that cost R300-million. I don't want government to be seen as a milking cow," Mapisa-Nqakula said.

The move is a victory for Cosatu's police affiliate union, the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, which previously described PPP prisons as "gruesome".

In the past, Popcru said the government's two existing PPP prisons in Makhado and Bloemfontein consume far more than their fair share of the department's budget - reportedly about R300-million each year - leaving little money to improve overcrowding at the rest of state-run prisons.

"With private prisons, you have no control over what happens. At the end of the day, you have no idea what monster you are producing," she said.

Mapisa-Nqakula said to reduce overcrowding in prisons, government was looking at how they could take about 3000 "psychiatric cases" out of prison, and was negotiating with other countries to take back their 17000 inmates who had committed crimes in South Africa and were now incarcerated here.