In his opening of parliament speech the president, Thabo Mbeki, called for the creation of a humane society where 'peace, security and dignity will replace crime, fraud, corruption, flagrant abuse of human rights and lawlessness'. Shortly thereafter safety and security minister Steve Tshwete announced the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster of ministries' priorities for the year. The priorities will 'ensure the cluster's contribution towards the president's vision', Tshwete said. How Tshwete will ensure the 'vision thing' will depend on how effectively each of the priorities are pursued.

The main objective of the cluster, which is comprised of the ministries of safety and security, justice and constitutional development, correctional services, home affairs, and defence, is to focus ‘its endeavours and resources jointly in addressing the incidence of crime, public disorder, inefficiencies in the justice system and all those aspects of our society that have the most negative effects on developement’. To achieve this objective the cluster identified several strategic interventions. These are spelt out below.

Social crime prevention

Policy makers within the cluster have come to the conclusion that the fight against crime can be won only if the issue of endemic poverty is tackled. In line with this the government has adopted an Urban Renewal Programme, which is a multi-faceted approach to dealing with problems in high-density poverty ridden urban areas.

The cluster has launched a number of pilot projects in high density crime areas around the country. These projects include such disparate activities as: crime awareness poster campaigns; safer school campaigns where reservists, neighbourhood watch members and teachers form school patrol units; and missing persons projects which concentrate on finding abducted and missing children through coordinated campaigns between the police service, its reservists, community organisations and the media. All the pilot projects are supported by a high visibility police presence, frequent police patrols, and intelligence driven cordon and search operations.

Prosecution led and intelligence driven investigations

The legislative framework for the Directorate of Special Operations (nicknamed the Scorpions) is nearing finalisation. The Scorpions will further the cluster’s objective to increase national conviction rates through prosecution led investigations. The Scorpions will focus its activities on priority crimes such as vehicle hijacking, syndicated drug and arms dealing, transnational crimes, money laundering, and corruption within the criminal justice system.

The cluster will also seek to improve methods of intelligence gathering and closer cooperation between the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the police service, the Scorpions, and the customs and immigration service. This is expected to contribute towards improved criminal investigations which should impact positively on the quality of prosecutions.

To ensure a more effective intelligence capacity, one of the cluster’s priorities for the year is to consolidate the state’s signal intelligence capacity. To accomplish this the intelligence ministry will spearhead the setting up of a national communication centre during the course of the year.

More effective border control

Porous borders hamper internal crime prevention. The cluster announced the creation of a national coordinated strategy to bolster its efforts to combat cross-border crimes. These include the smuggling of drugs, illegal firearms and other contraband goods, the exporting of hijacked vehicles, and the smuggling of illegal immigrants.

The cluster also intends to devote more attention to addressing the difficulties — such as bureaucratically onerous bi-lateral crime fighting agreements with other countries — inherent to effectively combating cross-border crimes.

Alternative containment and diversion

South Africa’s prisons have been built to accommodate approximately 100 000 inmates, but are holding 160 000. To alleviate the overcrowding problem, the cluster is looking at ways of creating diversion programmes to avoid sending persons convicted of relatively minor offences to prison.

To address the overcrowding problem the department of correctional services intends introducing an electronic monitoring system whereby convicted prisoners can be released and placed under community corrections. This system, which is more cost effective than imprisonment, allows correctional services officials to monitor the whereabouts of parolees by means of electronic tags or bracelets.

The department of justice has put out a tender on a Court Process Project which is aimed at automating its case processing system. This project will reduce delays in the finalisation of cases, reduce the number of awaiting trial prisoners, and increase the number of court hours.

Human resource development

The government has earmarked the year 2000 as the year of accelerated human resource development within the public service. The most intensive training programme within the cluster is that of the department of justice which has made it compulsory for all prosecutors to undergo training. A diploma course for court interpreters has been designed, and a Judicial Educational programme caters for the re-training of judges and magistrates.

To close existing gaps, and to ensure the cohesion of the criminal justice system, a joint training programme for prosecutors and detectives is in operation. Within the police service, increased attention will be given to the training of intelligence officers and detectives dealing with priority crimes.

Quality service delivery

To improve the coordination between all security departments, the cluster has set up a steering committee of directors-general to ensure coordinated planning and service delivery.

Improved service delivery is to be attained in the following manner:

Private sector partnerships

The departments of the cluster intend establishing and expanding partnerships with the private sector. For example, partnerships with private sector institutions such as banks are assisting the state with its border control functions, and the combating of commercial crimes.

The department of correctional services has awarded 25 year concession contracts to private sector consortia to design, construct and operate two prisons. The department is likely to award further contracts to private sector consortia to build and manage an increasing number of prisons to alleviate the overcrowding in its correctional facilities.

Vision versus implementation

The ‘strategic interventions’ identified by the departments comprising the criminal justice system — to contribute towards the president’s vision of creating a safer society — have merit. They will, however, succeed only if they are implemented without delay. Many good policies and plans adopted by the criminal justice departments in the past have floundered because of a lack of commitment to implement them.

Thus — to mention just one example — the electronic monitoring system for prisoners which was to have commenced at the beginning of 2000 had not got off the ground by April.

Many of the problems of the criminal justice system are self-evident. They have to do with a lack of training, resources and proper human resource management. To achieve the president’s vision of ridding the country of crime these problems need to be addressed. Once this has been done the implementation of the government’s plans for the criminal justice system should proceed apace.