Corporal punishment in prisons

The wider context of the conversation, though, is the overcrowding of South African prisons and in his view, and he backs it up with statistics, the minister is saying a lot of the people who are taking up space in prisons are awaiting trial, and they're they're because they are extremely poor and can't afford even small amounts of bail.

But the wider debate is, of course, on the one hand, about the suggestion that corporal punishment might be a way of dealing with this, give people lashes and off they go, or the wider questions of why the prisons are so full in the first place, Why is the awaiting trial system as blocked up as it should be. Let's get some expert insight into this and welcome to the show. So Hella Surajpal who's a legal researcher at the Judicial

Inspectorate for Correctional Services. And that Inspector, of course, is an official body and goes around looking at prisons and the conditions behind bars. So HeLa surraj PL welcome and thanks very much for giving us your time. I mean, if this is not a solution to overcrowding, and in particular the large numbers of people who are taking up space in prisons who are actually a waiting trial and have not been convicted, if this is not the solution, and I suspect you would argue it isn't. What do

you think are the priorities instead? Good afternoon to you.

needs to be done. And we also agree with him that it's largely driven by an increase in people awaiting trial and that we need alternatives to prison time to prison sentences, as you predicted, disagree that corporal punishment is an appropriate solution, and it's not just us who disagree.

The question has been resolved, as you say, by an Act of Parliament, but also by a decision of the Constitutional Court in nineteen ninety five when they were considering specifically the question of corporal punishment against juvenile offenders, because at that time the state had already agreed that it would be unconstitutional or to punish adult offenders in this way.

And they disagree because they said that corporal punishment violates a person's inherent human dignity, it's cruel, it's degrading, it's inhumane, and that our new democratic society should administer punishment that is in compliance with our constitutional values, and a state that meeters out violence against its own people is not in compliance with those values. But your question is a good one. Then what's the alternative if we agree that

prison isn't appropriate, but that corporal punishment also isn't. And the truth is that there are lots of alternatives that already exist in our law. There is a community service, there is house arrest, there's probation, which means that you are in a community you can still work, you can still be with your family, but there are certain restrictions on what you can do. Where you can go, You

have to report to a community corrections officer regularly. There's also restorative justice mechanisms where the focus is not on punishing you by sentencing you to prison, but on allowing you to make amends to the person who you can't.

So that might mean if you've stolen bread, which is the example that Minister for in Avold use, we would figure out how you could pay back the damage that you've done to that shopkeeper, for example, or you would have a mediation process with the person that you've maybe gotten into a fight with at this tavern. So there

are these alternatives that exist in our law. We call them non custodial options, but we neglect them because we over rely on prison sentences even for people who might be acting out of desperation, might be committing petty or trivial crimes, and we think those alternatives are what we really need to be focusing on.