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Why Was Shaik Sent to Jail in the First Place? |
| Publication |
Cape Argus |
| Date | 2009-03-11 |
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Web Link |
Rather than getting upset about Schabir Shaik being discharged from prison,
we should be asking what purpose was served by sending him there in the first
place.
Once he was convicted, his good name was shot and his reputation was in tatters.
The interests of society would have been far better served by some other
creative form of sentencing that left him outside fending for himself rather
than inside and living off the state.
Behind this lies an even bigger question about whether we need prisons at all.
While the knee-jerk assumption is that we do need places like Pollsmoor to make
us safer and reduce crime, there are plenty of criminologists who will tell you
that they achieve neither goal.
In the latest Institute for Security Studies Crime quarterly publication Lukas
Muntingh makes this case clearly (his paper is available online at
www.issafrica.org).
It's risky trying to summarise a complex theory, but Muntingh points out that
there's absolutely no evidence anywhere in the world that a high level of
imprisonment leads to a reduction in violent crime, and there is some evidence
that it has the reverse impact.
The classic arguments about deterrence and the safety achieved by "putting the
bad guys behind bars" are statistically, in the long term, delusions, yet
politicians persist with prison-building programmes. And anyone who suggests
lenient or alternative forms of sentencing is viewed as being "soft on crime"
and damned to hell by an angry electorate.
Prisons are the default option because of their symbolism. They are an
easy-to-comprehend and visible expression of the system and the power of the
state. We assume that we are safer because "they" are behind those high walls.
The jails also meet an emotional need for retribution, which Muntingh describes
as "backward-looking" in its desire to impose pain as punishment. We are meant
to feel a degree of satisfaction that the violent criminal has been put away for
a long time.
Those feelings are entirely valid and are not dismissed by criminologists, but
they caution us to avoid conflating the visceral urges with any real impact on
reducing crime.
The other hidden imperative around our prison system is its impact on the
economy. The Department of Correctional Services is actually a gigantic
sheltered employment scheme. We are spending more than R18 billion a year on
over 40 000 people who are paid to incarcerate around 150 000 prisoners.
On any rational level those numbers are crazy, especially given the strong
possibility that the result of all this spending may actually be to make our
crime levels worse.
There are also some massive contracts involved in building and servicing
prisons, so there are some powerful commercial interests vested in maintaining
the illusion that prisons work. So we will build more of them - there are five
new ones under construction at the moment - and employ more warders in a
never-ending spiral of madness.
No one is suggesting that prisons should be abolished entirely. There are some
criminals who simply need to be locked away because they are a serious and
irredeemable threat: Tsediso Letsoenya, the Cape Flats rapist convicted this
week, would be one of them. There are others who should be isolated from
society, provided the system can provide some prospect of the kind of
rehabilitation that would make them better citizens when they re-emerge.
But, in Muntingh's words, prisons need to be used "selectively, judiciously and
with a clear understanding of their purpose and what they can realistically
achieve". Imprisonment, he urges, "should be used as a measure of last resort".
Non-custodial sentences require a more sophisticated system than simply locking
people up. It is tempting to say that such things as prison farms, day-release
schemes, community work, electronic tagging, house arrest, or other restrictions
on movements, and educational programmes can only be achieved by wealthy
societies with low crime rates, like Sweden, but we must try and achieve them.
Every piece of evidence shows that those sent to prison have a higher recidivism
rate than those given community-based sentences and the longer the sentence, the
higher the chance of a return to criminality. So why do we continue to send
people to prison in their thousands? If the only answer is that it makes us feel
better or that they deserve it, then, ultimately, we are doing ourselves a
massive disservice.
It is going to take a very brave politician to lead the charge towards sanity on
this issue. He or she will cop flak from all those who claim to be "tough on
crime", which seems to mean replicating the failed policies of the past - long
sentences and high imprisonment rates - and somehow miraculously expecting to
achieve a different outcome.
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