Bulging Pollsmoor is no picnic
THOSE who describe Pollsmoor Prison as a “five-star hotel” should have been in the Western Cape High Court on Monday to hear Judge Vincent Saldanha deliver an historic ruling to alleviate the plight of awaiting-trial prisoners.
Judge Saldanha ordered the Department of Correctional Services to reduce overcrowding at Pollsmoor to no more than 120 percent by Wednesday, December 21. Presently, general overcrowding stands at at between 250% to 300%. To put it another way: there are 9 000 prisoners in a facility meant to hold just over 4 300.
We believe Judge Saldanha’s ruling is wise and empathetic, and once again highlights the extent to which our courts have been acting as true guardians of human rights in South Africa.
We realise that empathy for criminals may well be a rapidly receding quality in Cape Town, given the sheer brutality of some of the crimes that have been committed in our city. This is why we want to choose our words carefully.
The Correctional Services Department ought to be ashamed of itself. We believe that awaiting-trial prisoners should be presumed innocent until a court of law proves otherwise. But not only have those who are awaiting trial been stripped of their freedom, they have also been stripped of their dignity.
A year ago, when Sonke Gender Justice and Lawyers for Human Rights first challenged what they described as “life-threatening” conditions under which awaiting-trial prisoners were being held at Pollsmoor, a number of alarming facts were highlighted in affidavits from inmates, including the fact that up to 70 people were being held in a cell meant to hold 30, with all having to sleep on the floor.
That communal cell had one toilet and one shower and no hot water. An inmate who could not afford to post bail of R500 had been held under these conditions for two-and-a-half years.
Sonke Gender Justice and Lawyers for Human Rights also deserve the highest praise for taking on this case and for fighting so hard for the human rights of Pollsmoor’s awaiting-trial prisoners. It is appropriate that they were able to secure a highly significant human rights victory for prisoners in the same month that our constitution was signed into law by our first democratic president, Nelson Mandela, 20 years ago.