Ex-offenders should be made prison wardens in South Africa. Here’s why

This story was first published in The Conversation.

The Department of Correctional Services has been plagued by high levels of violence in prisons as well as a critical shortage of personnel. This is in the context of unsustainable rates of re-offending and little rehabilitation. It’s a circular problem.

One way to break the cycles that return offenders to prison is through the way society treats ex-offenders, providing them with basic human needs such as employment.

A culture of shaming

John Braithwaite, one of the West’s most cited criminologists, noted that different cultures have different ways to shame people who have been in prison. In societies like the US and South Africa, these people are often labelled and stigmatised.

They are pushed to the margins of society, preventing them from settling back into the mainstream and driving them into the arms of criminal sub-cultures. In contrast, cultures such as those found in China in the late 1900s and in Japan have tended to encourage reintegration into society. They have done this by highlighting what the former criminals have in common with other people – a shared ethical perspective.

Typically, stigmatising shaming cultures have high rates of recidivism or re-offending. The rate is 66% in the US. It’s somewhere between 86% and 94% in South Africa, where it’s more difficult to measure. Integrative shaming cultures have low re-offending figures – China’s at the turn of the century was 6%-8%.

When it comes to prison management, appointing ex-offenders as prison wardens not only provides the formerly incarcerated with a livelihood; it also provides the incarcerated population with positive role models with whom they share experiences and a common life trajectory. This represents an invaluable point of departure for integrative, constructive reprimand.

I’ve argued in a recent paper that South Africa should consider implementing this fruitful international approach, among others.

Evidence from other countries

In the US, 30 states have begun to employ model ex-offenders after their release from prison. The evidence from China and a great number of US states is that it works, according to reports like this one by the Marshall Project:

States do not necessarily track how many (ex-offenders) they have brought aboard. But a few agencies are beginning to formalise programmes, with the explicit goal of reducing the stigma that can follow ex-prisoners as they look for jobs.

We knew that as we were going out every day talking to the business community and asking them to hire our parolees, it would be hypocritical if we wouldn’t hire them ourselves.