- Title
- Review of the rehabilitation and integration of offenders
- Creator
- Darries, Share-Leigh
- Subject
- Gqeberha (South Africa)
- Subject
- Eastern Cape (South Africa)
- Subject
- Criminals--Rehabilitation--South Africa
- Date Issued
- 2021-04
- Date
- 2021-04
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/51199
- Identifier
- vital:43219
- Description
- “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones – and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals”.1 The constitutional mandate to ensure the successful rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders into society, upon eventual release falls on the South African Department of Correctional Services (DCS).2 In terms of this mandate, the Department is encumbered with the responsibility to develop programmes which not only addresses criminal conduct but results in the eventual drop of recidivism rates.3 Notwithstanding the Department’s inordinate efforts to discharge its constitutional mandate, recidivism rates continue to be on the rise.4 Built to digress from innate retributive traditions and the concept of punishment, the Department of Correctional Services proffered to alter our realities through the creation of an environment which essentially births different behaviours.5 A task rendered unattainable, as inordinate efforts become frustrated by the realities of prisons and the myth of rehabilitation. Despite having one of the most progressive criminal justice systems in the world, obstinate challenges in South African prisons and an overwhelming prison population make managing and translating its policies into practice all the more difficult.6 With high crime and recidivism rates inundating an already saturated criminal justice 1 Mandela Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (1994) 174-175. 2 Murhula and Singh “A Critical Analysis on Offenders Rehabilitation Approach in South Africa: A Review of the Literature” 2019 12 African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 21 21. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Department of Correctional Services “White Paper on Corrections in South Africa” (November 2004) (Republic of South Africa, Minister of Correctional Services)” http://wwww.dcs.gov.za/wpcontent/uploads/2016/08/WHITE-PAPER-8.pdf (accessed 2019-05-6) 5; Wainio “Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons season 3 premiere recap: Costa Rica: Prison on a Knife-Edge” https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/showsnob.com/2018/12/24/inside-the-worlds-toughest-prisonsseason-3-premiere/amp (accessed 2019-05-6). 6 McAree “Prisoner Rehabilitation in South Africa: A case study of Phoenix Zululand’s work in Eshowe Correctional Facilities” 2011 School for International Training 7. ix system, and exposure of minor offenders to hardened criminals become all the more common,7 the vision of translating every offender who walks through the prison gate into corrigible and law-abiding citizens8 become a far-kept dream. Instead, South African prisons become nothing but breeding grounds of criminality, 9 and temporary vessels of human right violations, as an inmates try to come to terms with the fact that their eventual release into society is met with ostracization, destabilized community relations and collateral consequences.10 Since offenders are usually detained for long periods on remand, prisons are innately prevented from becoming correctional centers despite this being a stated aim in the White Paper on Corrections.11 Against this backdrop, the researcher proffers to broaden the perpetual desire to construct a transformed and developed system; one which charts a course from innate retributive traditions to one which births rehabilitated offenders into society. Mindful of the obstinate penal system which undeniably perpetuates colonial structures through dichotomization, this treatise offers an altered reality, a system which respects and promotes the values and rights enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.12
- Description
- Thesis (LLM) -- Faculty of Law, Criminal and Procedural Law, 2021
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (ix, 58 leaves)
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Law
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
- Rights
- All Rights Reserved
- Rights
- Open Access
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