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SA has just one criminologist to deal with prison parole applications, MPs hear

SA has just one criminologist to deal with prison parole applications, MPs hear
Prisoners put their hands behind their heads during a search of cells at Goodwood Correctional Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. 18 July 2024. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Jaco Marais)
Rebecca Davis
By Rebecca Davis
17 Sep 2024
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At a meeting of Parliament’s correctional services committee on Tuesday, MPs were told that only one criminologist in the entire country is employed by the South African prisons system to assess parole applications.

South Africa’s backlog in dealing with parole applications for prisoners serving life sentences has long been a problem – and on Tuesday, Parliament heard one of the major contributing factors.

“The challenge we have is that there is a shortage of criminologists,” Judge Letty Molopa-Sethosa told the correctional services portfolio committee.

“The information we have is that there is only one criminologist in the employ of DCS [Department of Correctional Services] who is based in the Western Cape.”

As such, Molopa-Sethosa said, officials “have to refer the offender from wherever they are to this criminologist”.

The judge described the situation as a “very serious concern” which had been the case “for a long time”.

prisoners Prisoners during a raid at Goodwood Correctional Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. 18 July 2024. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Jaco Marais)



In recent months, the issue of how officials make decisions when it comes to serious offenders has been in the spotlight after a parole board recommended the release of former police officer Marius van der Westhuizen – subsequently revoked in August by the Correctional Supervision and Parole Review Board.

Van der Westhuizen killed his three children, aged between 21 months and 16 years, in 2006. His oldest daughter was also reportedly disabled. The cop shot them in front of his wife, Charlotte, apparently in revenge for her having chosen to pursue a career.

Among those opposing the parole of Van der Westhuizen was former Western Cape top cop Jeremy Veary, who told journalists in June that he was concerned by the fact that the chair of the parole board had told Charlotte, “You must forgive, otherwise you will not heal.”

Veary also said that at the parole hearing, Van der Westhuizen said he “had failed to fulfil his duties as a man because women are the weaker sex and they have hormones” – evidence, Veary suggested, that the former policeman was not rehabilitated.

Criminologist Liza Grobler wrote at the time that the decision was “appalling”, and was evidence of a parole system that was “deeply flawed and too often arbitrary”. Grobler highlighted the lack of criminologists and psychologists advising parole boards as a big part of the problem.

Molopa-Sethosa on Tuesday also reiterated the shortage of psychologists to MPs, saying there were just 75 posts filled nationally in correctional centres.

Good news on lifer backlog


Molopo-Sethosa was briefing the committee in her capacity as the chair of the National Council for Correctional Services on the vexed topic of the lifer backlog in South African prisons.

The sheer number of people in SA prisons now serving life sentences is an increasing problem in terms of capacity and overcrowding. The most recent annual report of prisons watchdog, the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (Jics), headed by retired judge Edwin Cameron, stated that around 18% of sentenced inmates are lifers: 18,641 of 101,186 total sentenced offenders.

prisoners Prisoners put their hands behind their heads during a search of cells at Goodwood Correctional Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. 18 July 2024. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Jaco Marais)



The Jics said the number of lifers has “significantly” risen over the past 27 years, reflecting both the rise in violent crime in South Africa and the influence of minimum sentencing laws.

But another aspect has been the troubling delays in decisions made over parole for lifers. The Jics reported having met with lifers who had been awaiting decisions on their parole applications for years. The body refers to the lifer parole process as being in “crisis”.

Correctional Services Minister Pieter Groenewald told Parliament on Tuesday that when he took up his position on 3 July 2024, he inherited a backlog of 495 lifer parole cases “going back to 2019”.

Of these, 325 profiles have been considered by the minister in just over two months since assuming his role. Groenewald told the committee that he hoped to report that, by 15 October, the backlog would be entirely cleared.

This will be welcome news to groups like Concerned Families of Lifers in South Africa, which lobby for the “overdue” release of loved ones serving life sentences and who are eligible for parole.

The release of serious offenders on parole is a political hot potato due to public perceptions of high levels of recidivism among former inmates. The Jics reports that between April 2022 and March 2023, a total of 2,554 re-arrests occurred due to parole violations.

Groenewald jokes that he didn’t want the job


Groenewald, the leader of the Freedom Front Plus, was appointed as one of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ministers in the Cabinet of the Government of National Unity (GNU). Jokingly, he told the committee: “[Ramaphosa] didn’t do me any favours making me the Minister of Correctional Services.”

This is because the position was among those created by Ramaphosa seemingly in order to create GNU jobs in the executive: the correctional services portfolio had been bundled together with the justice department for a decade.

Groenewald said that in the dinner Ramaphosa hosted at his Cape Town residence last week with leaders of the ten GNU parties, one of the topics of discussion was the G20 meetings to be held in South Africa in 2025.

Groenewald said he asked Ramaphosa at the dinner: “When the G20 is taking place, can you please try to negotiate with your counterparts that we can export some of our prisoners to them.” DM

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