‘Prison not the only way to help young offenders’

A PRISONERS rights organisation has called for an intensified focus on rehabilitating young offenders who have a higher chance of re-offending.

The SA National Institute for Crime Prevention (Nicro) has also raised concerns over the number of young inmates awaiting trial.

According to the organisation, while there are no official re-offending rates available for South African prisons, the only statistics that were available come from small-scale civil society studies, which placed the re-offending rate between 50% and 94% for offenders of all ages.

Nicro’s operational manager Betzi Pierce said research showed that younger individuals were at the onset of crime and at the greater risk of having offending behaviour being entrenched. “Offenders that are left untreated, also tend to get more violent over time.

“In addition, youth do not have needed support and resources in the community to ensure that they do not turn back to crime,” said Pierce.

She said while Nicro acknowledged that prison was a necessity, especially for dangerous offenders, the organisation, which specialises in social crime prevention and offender reintegration for adults and children, believes many offenders should be handed non-custodial sentences.

“Nicro advocates (for) a problem-solving rather than a punitive approach to offenders. For those offenders who are sent to prison, they must be afforded access to education and psychological and social services. The skills shortage in prisons must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”

She said the effectiveness of imprisonment as a sanction has always been the subject of debate.

“While imprisonment should, in theory, bring about behavioural change as well as improved education and training, this does not occur on the scale that is needed. On the contrary, persons often leave prison with no improvement in their behaviour, nor with their ability and resolve to commit crime lessened.

“Imprisonment often decreases offenders’ future prospects; most persons leave prison ill-equipped to lead a constructive life in society and are frequently at a disadvantage because they have been in prison.

“Stigmatisation and marginalisation leading to social exclusion often follows imprisonment, resulting in conditions that soon lead to reoffending. This results in what is referred to as the “revolving door effect,” said Pierce.

“It would appear as if prisons are not fulfilling their mandate to rehabilitate and reintegration offenders back into society.”

Nicro’s Anneke Burns said their views were in line with restorative justice principles, especially where youth incarceration is concerned.

“Diversion is an early intervention and cannot always be used for offenders but it is really important that we deal with offenders when they start committing crime, if we leave them, their behaviour will escalate and become entrenched.

“Non-custodial sentencing is also an important element because where diversion service prevents them from going into the stream of imprisonment, but once they are considered for going into the stream of imprisonment, there is still that opportunity to keep them out of prison by putting them on a non-custodial sentence where they will get the treatment that they need,” said Burns.