According to a Grocott's Mail source in Grahamstown, senior officials at the correctional services head office didn't properly explain the process of releasing pardoned prisoners to department employees.
According to a Grocott's Mail source in Grahamstown, senior officials at the correctional services head office didn't properly explain the process of releasing pardoned prisoners to department employees.
Because of this, the source said members of the public were also ill-informed, which led to unnecessary panic and controversy. The source approached Grocott's Mail last week in response to an article published at the end of last month, about 11 prisoners who had already been re-arrested, out of the estimated 200 released in the Grahamstown area.
The source felt the need to emphasise to the public that not all kinds of offenders were released, or received lighter sentences after the President's call for their special remission earlier this year. The source said that certain criteria were used when the prisoners were released.
According to documents in the possession of Grocott's Mail, all prisoners, probationers and parolees in the country qualified for a six-month decrease in sentence irrespective of crime committed. Only those who had been jailed for violent crimes like murder, robbery and sexual offences were denied an extra 12-month remission, the document said.
This is the kind of information that the source said should be clearly explained to people. Our senior officials need to go out and educate the communities about how the special remission process is done and not just blame the communities for not giving the prisoners enough support, the source said.
After the media had reported on numerous prisoners being sent back to jail within a month of their release, the Eastern Cape correctional services spokesperson Nobuntu Ganta was quoted saying that the public was partly to blame, for not giving ex-offenders enough support on the outside.
Some of those prisoners committed serious crimes when they were arrested and now the communities are still holding on to that, the source said. This is why he feels that correctional services officials who are permitted to speak to the media and communities should take the time and make an effort to explain the whole process.
The presidential pardon of prisoners across the country was launched on Freedom Day this year to alleviate overcrowding in South African prisons, including 35 prisons in the Eastern Cape.
