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10 May 2007

This briefing lifts up some elements from a report we gave to Cabinet as part of the regular report back on the work the various clusters do in pursuance of the priorities that are identified at the beginning of each year. The cluster's report covers the January to February period.

The key priorities of the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster (JCPS) cluster are the reduction of crime, especially serious and violent crime, capacity building across the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in order to improve, not only the level of effectiveness in investigations and prosecutions, but also the involvement of the community in the fight against crime.

Partnerships

Community participation in crime prevention and combating speaks to government's strategy of building partnerships with different stakeholders at the various levels of governance. Further to advance that philosophy, the co-operation that exists between government and the business sector is growing stronger.

The initiative comprises a range of interventions by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), supported by the business sector.

Government

Crime prevention continues to be the key focus of policing. During the period under review, several operations in all provinces were carried out, focusing on policing areas where there is a high incidence of serious and violent crime. Additional steps that were taken to improve policing generally and in the high crime areas specifically, included:

* the provision of more and better resources to various local police stations
* the establishment and enhancement of operational control centres across the country
* the acquisition and deployment of additional capital equipment aimed at enhancing SAPS's crime fighting machinery
* the improvement of arrest, investigation and prosecution capabilities; and processes within government.

Business

The business sector's contribution to crime prevention and combating included the following interventions:

* development and upgrading of closed circuit television to support crime prevention, law enforcement and prosecutions
* design of and the improvement of cash management standards to prevent the theft of the financial resources under the control of business and other sectors
* contribution to information gathering especially by the South African Banking Risk Intelligence Centre
* alignment and co-ordination of the work of private security with SAPS operations
* fast-tracking the implementation of anti-hijacking initiatives within the business sector (including the micro-dotting of vehicles, automotive number plate recognition, etc)
* supporting the recruitment of police reservists, with particular attention to areas of specialisation
* the adoption by business of clusters of police stations for support.

The business sector has also developed standards to deal with the retail environment, especially shopping centres, as part of crime prevention in collaboration with the police.

The various initiatives, which were launched during the period under review, are already showing success in the fight against organised aggravated robberies and serious and violent crime.

There are meetings that have been held with the Security Industry Alliance (SIA) where the upgrade was discussed of the co-operation between the law enforcement agencies and the private security companies. The discussions are ongoing. The private security industry is an important element of crime prevention and works with law enforcers in areas like robberies at residential and business premises. Common cause is also being sought with respect to the transportation, across the country, of money to various destinations. The police have offered to train security guards whose responsibility it is to ferry and protect the cash. The private security industry accepts that the vehicles they are using for that purpose need to be reinforced so that they are not easily penetrated by criminals.

Communities

The main orientation of the partnerships is community involvement in crime prevention and combating. Community policing defines a close relationship between the police and the communities.

The communities are involved, in the first instance, as authors, together with the police, of the policing priorities in their areas. They choose from their ranks the best representatives to work alongside the police to a programme that is developed mutually and do, together, an assessment of their work.

We are revamping the Community Police Forums (CPF) so that they can co-ordinate the partnership between the communities and the police and even mediate whatever conflicts may arise in the context of the programme to prevent and combat crime.

A workshop will be held in Pretoria, on Monday, 14 May, where the role of the CPFs will be discussed extensively.

There are at present 1 101 CPFs around the country, at various levels of development. Some of them are doing very well while others continue to experience problems of development and resourcing.

The reorganisation of the CPFs is intended to introduce a sense of more urgency in their development, resourcing and work, better to facilitate community policing.

The communities are encouraged to identify among themselves trustworthy and loyal members to be trained in basic policing as police reservists and as a force multiplier for purposes of visible policing. The reservists, working together with and under the leadership of professional police commanders will do patrols on a regular basis, mount roadblocks and participate in cordon and search operations.

There are currently 44 356 reservists spread around the country. They include some members of the commando units that have been phased out.

Public transport

Crime combating forums in the rail environment have been formed in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng to deal with crimes that happen in that environment.

The development follows the establishment in the three provinces of the Railway Police that resort under SAPS's Division Protection and Security Services. The current allocation to the provinces is 418 (Western Cape), 165 (KwaZulu-Natal), and 400 (Gauteng). The total allocation of 1 171 is buttressed by 188 members who are deployed at the National Mobile Train Unit (NMTU). The total includes the command structure, the component head, section and sub-section heads.

Criminal Justice System

The Criminal Justice System still indicates areas where co-ordination is not at its best. This therefore is one of the challenges that the JCPS cluster is addressing on a continuous basis. We are spending resources in order for us to improve capacity across the system and ensure, in the circumstances, better investigations, prosecutions and rehabilitation of offenders.

More resources

The use of technology and other modern tools continues to underpin the work of the police. Capital investment decisions were taken further to enhance policing command and control capabilities. The intention is to fight, in the short to medium term, organised violent crime. The deployment of the requisite means and forces will extend over the next three years.

Capital purchases include 10 mobile command vehicles (R35 million), six Robinson helicopters (R31,2 million), five blimps for aerial surveillance (R25 million), 200 mobile Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) units (R16 million), as well as other specialist technologies (e.g. Facial Recognition Systems).

Investigations

The SAPS "flood and flush" operations in the priority areas have yielded a number of arrests over the January to February period, for example:

Murder: 1 800
Attempted murder: 1 063
Robbery aggravated: 2 598
Total: 5 461

The focus on outstanding warrants of arrest and the search for suspects identified from clues at crime scenes has resulted in the arrest of 298 suspects linked to over 300 cases. The arrests will receive priority attention in the subsequent prosecution processes, given the seriousness of the crimes.

Prosecutions

We are still paying particular attention to the case backlog regarding our court work. Twelve additional backlog sites have been established as an addition to the original five courts that are dealing with the matter. The additions in February indicate the following:

* Western Cape: Four additional courts at Atlantis (to assist with the backlog at Cape Town and Vredenburg), Khayelitsha, Paarl (Somerset West), and Bellville (focusing on serious commercial crime cases).
* KwaZulu-Natal: Three additional courts at Kokstad, Port Shepstone (Ezingolweni), and Durban (focusing on serious commercial crimes cases).
* Eastern Cape: One court for Mthatha (Tsolo)
* Gauteng: Three additional courts at Protea (Lenasia), Tembisa and Randburg).

The Department of Justice initiated a project last year to trace defaulters in the maintenance of children arising from court orders to that effect. The project is called Operation Isondlo which has seen many defaulters appearing in court and paying maintenance. There are new applications that have been received countrywide in the wake of the successful Isondlo Awareness Campaign. The number of children receiving maintenance has increased.

Over the period under review 865 beneficiaries and defaulters were traced.

Corrections

Overcrowding continues to be one of the big problems that the Department of Correctional Services has to deal with. We have adopted a different way of dealing with overcrowding which relates to the numbers of people who could either be admitted to bail or released on their own cognisance and warned to appear at an appropriate time. The police are being encouraged to use their discretion to release suspects who pay bail in less serious or minor cases in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act. Further police discretion relates to categories of minor crime where the police can release suspects on warning.

The admission of guilt and plea bargaining are the other instruments we are increasingly using to keep the offender population at our correctional facilities at manageable levels, among other things to facilitate our rehabilitation programme.

There are sentenced detainees who have been given fines of R1 000 or less who continue to remain in the detention facilities because they are unable to pay those fines. The matter is being dealt with by a task team that is comprised of officials from the Departments of Justice and Constitutional Development and Correctional Services. The intention is to identify those detainees and facilitate their release on the basis of correctional supervision or community services. This consideration relates only to less serious and non-violent crimes.

The process has seen 10 978 detainees who qualify for release, 6 135 of whom have already appeared before court for consideration en route to their formal release.

The other interventions include the increased use by courts of alternative sentencing. The process has benefited 3 099 offenders who were sentenced to correctional supervision while 357 already sentenced offenders had their sentences converted to correctional supervision. The Correctional Supervision and Parole Boards placed 6 085 offenders on parole. Those decisions were taken in full cognisance of the need to ensure public safety, hence the limitation of non-custodial sentences to offenders who do not pose a danger to society.

National Security

The Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence has called for written submissions from members of the public and interested parties through print and radio advertisements during the period 1 April and 15 April 2007. The closing date for the submissions was 4 May 2007. The government departments, via the respective ministries, were also requested to make written submission to the Commission by 11 May 2007.

The Commission had earlier in the year held briefings with structures within intelligence services and the Inspector-General. During these briefings, the services were requested to make presentations on topics covered by the Commission's Terms of Reference as well as recommendations that will see the minimising of the potential for illegal conduct and abuse of power.

International co-operation

South African Police Service

Currently we have 125 SAPS members deployed together with members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in Darfur, serving as a peace-keeping force in this country.

During this reporting period the South African Police Service had rendered training to several police agencies in Africa and they are as follows:

* Hostage negotiation: Namibia and Mauritius
* Organised Crime Investigation: 24 members from various countries in the region
* Commercial crime: 24 members from various countries in the region
* Crowd management: 200 members from the National Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
* Strategic Leadership Programme: 30 members, Botswana
* Forensic science in ballistics: Swaziland
* Counter terrorism: 24 members from the region

Intelligence

Since the inception of the Committee on Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA), there has been significant growth in the co-operation and intelligence sharing among the intelligence services on the continent. This is manifested in the number of workshops that has been held under the auspices of CISSA and also the development of the Continental Threat Assessment to advise the African Union on matters of peace and security.

At present CISSA is preparing for the Fourth Ordinary Session of the CISSA conference to be held in Khartoum from 1 to 8 June 2007. The Southern African region of CISSA is currently meeting in South Africa to consider issues to be discussed at the conference.

South Africa is also leading the rollout of a secure communication system that will allow for easy sharing of intelligence on the continent.

Issued by: Secretariat for Safety and Security
10 May 2007