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The Minister of Correctional Services, Mr Ben Skosana, will be delivering a keynote address at the 6th Annual Infrastructure Financing & Development Symposium at the Sandton Crowne Plaza in Johannesburg, today.

His address would focus on the development of New Generation Prisons as the future of infrastructure in the construction of prisons.

Central to the Minister's address would be the design and construction of structures that would support the Unit Management concept in the management of prisons. Unit Management is a well-established and proven system for effective prison management and the implementation of rehabilitation programmes. According to Bruyns, Jonker and Luyt, South African academics, Unit Management is a development of such magnitude that it may be described as a major philosophical shift in the South African prison system.

The Minister believes that the introduction of New Generation prisons will be of little value to us unless we can find suitable low cost prison designs, which meet our operational requirements and take into account our limited financial resources. To uncritically imitate international designs can be a costly mistake. This point has been clearly demonstrated by our recent prison facility construction history.

In fact, one of the main features of the New Generation prison is its ability to minimise personnel committed to access and migration control functions. Another important feature is the utilisation of proven conventional low maintenance security systems that do not require specialised skills to maintain. In addition, the New Generation prison is architecturally configured in such a way that its security mainly comes from its design as opposed to high staffing and high technology systems with high maintenance costs.

The design, construction and financing of future prisons must assist us in dealing with the scourge of overcrowding in prisons facing the country, says the Minister.

The daily average prisoner population has grown from 110 000 in 1994 to over 161 000 in the first half of 2000, an increase of nearly 7% per annum. At the same time, the bed space in prisons has risen by only 1,4% per year from 94 400 to 101 000. The increase in the number of prisoners has been accompanied by a very rapid change in the ratio of sentenced prisoners to un-sentenced prisoners, with the latter making up 19% of the prisoner population in 1994 and 37% in the first half of 2000. On 31 July 2001 there were 168 497 prisoners in custody of whom 50 902 were un-sentenced and 117 595 were sentenced. The total accommodation capacity of our prisons is 105 016 prisoners, meaning that we were overcrowded by 63 481 or 60.4%.

Nonetheless, the Government will continue to explore private financing options for prison infrastructure development, even though this does not seem to be ideal, because of the need to drastically expand the capacity of the system due to the massive overcrowding situation in our prisons and the obvious strain such a building programme would have on public funding.

"Notwithstanding the aforementioned limitations regarding private sector funding for prison infrastructure development, there is a continuum of options for involving the private sector in the provision of infrastructure services in the corrections environment," the Minister concluded.

Contact: Tšoeu Ntsane at 082-905-9749

Issued by: Ministry of Correctional Services, 9 October 2001