Prison conditions need to change

YOUR report (August 2) that Pollsmoor Prison’s remand detention cells (ie awaiting trial prisoners) have finally reduced overcrowding from a horrific 252% to 148%. This was only achieved after a scathing judgment from Judge Vincent Saldanha ruled these conditions unconstitutional.

Even the present conditions mean that each dormitory cell still holds oneand-a-half times the number of accused men of its maximum capacity. The consequent squalor is that those men not members of a gang must either sleep on the floor, or two per bed. Tuberculosis, not to mention sexual violence and HIV, all spread in such conditions.

Parliament has by popular demand passed laws which quadrupled the number of criminals serving 20 years to life imprisonment. But it has not started a concomitant programme of building the extra jails that are the consequences. It would be sensible to build a new prison in the Atlantis industrial area, so the prison warders and service providers could also create some employment in this hot spot for unemployment.

Another still persisting problem at Pollsmoor Prison is its weird routine of serving lunch around 11am and supper around 2pm. This means the inmates are left to starve for 14 hours before breakfast. They learn the hard way to hoard two slices of dry bread from their “lunch” for eating around sunset. One consequence of crumbs is to increase the occurrence of cockroaches and fungi.

Surely the parliamentary portfolio committee on correctional services should press for normal mealtimes? Or do we have to wait for some NGO to litigate over the Dickensian conditions?

Far too few reforms have taken place in the 32 years since I was detained without trial in Pollsmoor Prison. Keith Gottschalk Claremont