House Chairperson, the Judicial Inspectorate of Correctional Services plays an absolutely essential role in ensuring that all people who are incarcerated in our prisons are held in conditions of human dignity. Because of that, many strategy provisions are laid down in the Correctional Services Act on which the department has to report to the Judicial Inspectorate. These include the reporting and investigating of deaths of prisoners in non-natural circumstances, the segregation of prisoners and the use of mechanical constraints. What we are finding in the portfolio committee is that, as often as not, these things occur in the department without their being reported. In other words, the intention of the Act is being undermined by the officials on the ground.
That says to us that the very important work done by the Judicial Inspectorate is not being taken seriously, so much so that in one case an official of the Judicial Inspectorate was denied entry into the Vanrhynsdorp Correctional Centre. For that reason, we support the proposal that has served before the portfolio committee: that the Judicial Inspectorate gets its own budget, that it is made independent of the Department of Correctional Services so that it can act without fear and favour; and that Parliament ought to take its recommendations very seriously because it is the institution that is going to ensure that prisons are not run in the way they were under the apartheid regime. [Applause.]
Motion agreed to.
Report accordingly noted.