Chapter 9

CONCLUSION

The South African criminal justice system is in a crisis. It is estimated that, out of every 1 000 crimes that are committed in South Africa, only 50 result in the successful prosecution of the perpetrators.519 The number of recorded crimes increased considerably over the last decade, while the number of cases taken on by the prosecution service declined substantially over this period. On a range of other performance indicators — such as recorded levels of violent crime, case backlogs in the courts, the size of the incarcerated awaiting trial population, and the public’s confidence in the ability of the state to combat crime effectively — the criminal justice system is performing poorly.

The government has responded to the crisis in a variety of ways. New policy visions have been developed for the core departments comprising the criminal justice system. Numerous pieces of legislation have been placed on the statute books to enable the state to fight new forms of crime more effectively and combat old forms with greater rigour. New structures and institutions have been created to give teeth to the government’s commitment to transform the criminal justice system and to make it more effective in the fight against crime. However, given the ambitious nature of some of the policy visions, the complex features of much of the new crime-fighting legislation, the sheer size of the police service and the magnitude of the crime problem, it will take some time before the criminal justice system can extricate itself from the crisis it is in.

The police service employs over 100 000 police officers who rely on their equipment — from vehicles and radios to bulletproof vests — to perform their work properly. The department of correctional services employs 30 000 prison warders and is dependent upon the integrity of its prisons to operate optimally and prevent escapes. These two components of the criminal justice system are too large and reliant upon equipment and expensive buildings to be able to respond to the present crisis in a rapid and flexible manner.

There is, however, one important component of the criminal justice system that can respond positively to the crisis in the short to medium term: the prosecution service. The prosecution service is in the fortunate position of having identified most of the impediments preventing it from operating in an effective and efficient manner. No time needs to be wasted to pinpoint the major obstacles that have to be overcome for the prosecution service to perform optimally.

The prosecution service is small and relies almost exclusively on the intellectual capacity of its staff to fulfil its mandate. With the right mix of centralised control and regional autonomy, the prosecution service is in a good position to boost the performance of its 2 500 graduate prosecutors rapidly, thereby removing a crucial bottleneck in the criminal justice process.

Many recent developments in the prosecution service are steps in the right direction. The directorate of special operations with its multidisciplinary prosecution-driven approach to investigations, the specialised units in the office of the national director, the development of new positions within the service to enhance the career choices of prosecutors, the tentative outsourcing of selected prosecutions, and the comprehensive practice-oriented training courses for new prosecutors are all positive developments to improve the performance of the prosecution service.

Many problems remain, however. Inadequate remuneration has decimated the number of experienced and talented prosecutors. The prosecution service’s professional staff is its most valuable asset, and one which is extremely difficult to replace if experience and skill levels are to be maintained at acceptable levels. It is consequently puzzling that prosecutors’ salaries are not given the attention they deserve. The national budget can afford to increase prosecutors’ salaries substantially. While this may be unfair to other public servants, it is warranted given the crucial and unique role the prosecution service plays in the fight against crime. The issue of better remuneration for prosecutors is too important to be ignored or even postponed because of bureaucratic wrangling and inflexible public service wage-bargaining structures.

Once prosecutors’ salaries have been improved, most of the other problems besetting the prosecution service can be addressed at reasonable cost to the state. However, some of the problems require innovative solutions. Mentoring programmes for new prosecutors, internships in the prosecution service for law graduates, outsourcing prosecutions and performance-based salary scales — to mention just a few proposals contained in this study — are fairly novel ideas for the conservative and bureaucratic world of the public service.

The fight against crime and the role of the prosecution service in this fight are too important to permit the dismissal of good, yet seemingly unorthodox solutions. With political commitment, the public’s desire to combat crime and the dedication of prosecutors throughout the country, the prosecution service can fulfil its potential of becoming the linchpin of the state’s war against crime.