The Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services has today successfully conducted an oversight visit to the Pollsmoor Correctional Centre in Tokai in the City of Cape Town.
Committee Chairperson Ms Kgomotso Anthea Ramolobeng said the visit forms part of the committee’s constitutional mandate over the Department of Correctional Services (DCS). She said the committee will regularly conduct such physical oversight visits and then follow up on the commitments made by officials to address the challenges that were highlighted.
In its walkabout programme, the committee visited the centre’s clinic, baby-mother-housing unit, the section for juvenile remand detainees, female section, male section as well as the workshops for woodwork, steelwork, and textiles. Ms Ramolobeng said it was worthwhile to see what was theoretically presented to the committee in its practical version on the ground.
After its walkabout around the facility the committee received a briefing from the DCS on, among other things, structure and functions, challenges and successes, inmate population, management of overcrowding, healthcare services, and self-sufficiency.
The committee raised concerns over the high levels of overcrowding at the facility as well as delays in its maintenance. The remand detainees facility is 234% overcrowded, Medium A- section 146%, Medium B-Section 149%, Medium C-Section61% and the female section is 248% overcrowded.
At the remand detainee facility for juveniles, Ms Ramolobeng, encouraged the young detainees to change as life inside correctional centres is obviously uncomfortable and inconvenient. “When you are arrested you jettison your home comfortability and some rights and endure a direct opposite of that behind the prison doors. You may enjoy your limited human rights, but in an unfavourable correctional centre environment,” said Ms Ramalobeng.
Regarding the lack of maintenance of infrastructure at the centre, the committee has seen some dilapidated parts of the facility, damaged water infrastructure at certain areas, kitchen equipment not working and the bed space at the remand detainees that need urgent attention.
Ms Ramlobeng said the committee has resolved to have a joint meeting with the Portfolio Committee on Public Works and Infrastructure to address the problem of maintenance at facilities as the challenge of maintenance is common at all the facilities that the committee has visited.
