ActionSA Outraged as SA Prisons Effectively Serve as Taxpayer-Funded Holiday Resorts
Dereleen James
ActionSA Member of Parliament
ActionSA expresses outrage that South Africa’s prisons have effectively become taxpayer-funded holiday resorts, where criminals live in what appears to be carefree abandon without any constraint or consequences, despite being incarcerated for harming society.
Following a widely circulated social media post revealing a prisoner at Cape Town’s Goodwood Correctional Centre boasting about the luxury and comfort enjoyed behind bars, ActionSA is outraged in that this serves as both a damning indictment of a failed correctional system and, more importantly, an insult to the victims of these criminals.
As argued during the Correctional Services Budget Vote Debate on Monday, it has long been evident that our correctional services system has bent the knee to criminality, with wardens colluding with and taking instructions from inmates who operate with impunity in our prisons.
Lest we forget, it is innocent, law-abiding citizens whose hard-earned taxes clothe, feed and shelter the very criminals who have shown contempt for the rule of law, and in the case of violent criminals, disregard for human rights and life. It is therefore unthinkable that our prisons have been abrogated to anything other than places where such criminals should be serving hard time as punishment.
ActionSA will be probing this matter with the Minister of Correctional Services to obtain an account of how prisoners at the Goodwood Correctional Centre came to possess and brazenly use mobile devices, and to understand the immediate steps the department will take to restore the integrity of our prison system.
ActionSA Outraged as SA Prisons Effectively Serve as Taxpayer-Funded Holiday Resorts
ActionSA expresses outrage that South Africa’s prisons have effectively become taxpayer-funded holiday resorts, where criminals live in what appears to be carefree abandon without any constraint or consequences, despite being incarcerated for harming society.
Following a widely circulated social media post revealing a prisoner at Cape Town’s Goodwood Correctional Centre boasting about the luxury and comfort enjoyed behind bars, ActionSA is outraged in that this serves as both a damning indictment of a failed correctional system and, more importantly, an insult to the victims of these criminals.
As argued during the Correctional Services Budget Vote Debate on Monday, it has long been evident that our correctional services system has bent the knee to criminality, with wardens colluding with and taking instructions from inmates who operate with impunity in our prisons.
Lest we forget, it is innocent, law-abiding citizens whose hard-earned taxes clothe, feed and shelter the very criminals who have shown contempt for the rule of law, and in the case of violent criminals, disregard for human rights and life. It is therefore unthinkable that our prisons have been abrogated to anything other than places where such criminals should be serving hard time as punishment.
ActionSA will be probing this matter with the Minister of Correctional Services to obtain an account of how prisoners at the Goodwood Correctional Centre came to possess and brazenly use mobile devices, and to understand the immediate steps the department will take to restore the integrity of our prison system.