Parolees de-tagged in row over tender
Electronic tagging of almost 600 dangerous parolees has been scrapped with immediate effect.
Department of Correctional Services commissioner Zach Modise told regional commissioners on Thursday to remove the tags and provide confirmation within a week.
The move comes amid a row with the supplier of the tags over an unpaid bill of more than R100-million, and follows a warning last month by correctional services’ chief financial officer, Nick Ligege, that the department needed to tighten its belt.
The tagging system is used for convicts who have been given parole after being imprisoned for serious violent crimes, and those who have finished serving “life sentences”.
Department spokesman Logan Maistry said the five-year contract with Engineered Systems Solutions had been terminated after President Jacob Zuma signed a proclamation ordering a Special Investigating Unit probe into how it was awarded.
Modise’s decision was based on a recommendation by one of his deputies, Veliswa Mvandaba, who said in a memo on Wednesday: “It is expected of all regional commissioners to make sure that all tagged offenders are de-tagged with immediate effect.”
Mvandaba raises concerns about public safety. “[Regions] are requested to consider the conditions of the offenders and make sure that the safeties of communities are not compromised,” she writes, saying parolees will have to be “physically monitored”.
Modise’s memo the following day instructs regional commissioners to summon tagged offenders to community correctional offices for the removal of tags and “reclassification”, which involves giving them instructions about monitoring and reporting points.
“The regions are requested to develop a transition plan on how the process should unfold and ensure all devices are returned to the service provider through couriers after de-tagging,” writes Mvandaba.
Engineered Systems Solutions has taken the department to court, claiming no explanation has been offered for termination of a contract that was supposed to run until 2019.
Director Mario Jose Andrade Ferreira said the company was informed of the pending termination in March and filed an application with the High Court in Pretoria in June. On Friday, it wrote to correctional services lawyers warning that if the decision was not reversed it would bring an urgent application for an interdict tomorrow.
“By instructing the regional managers to de-tag prisoners your client has taken the law into its own hands,” the letter says.
Ferreira said the company had not been paid for over a year.
Maistry said de-tagged convicts would be monitored in the same way as other parolees. “No offender is tagged for life. Each person placed on parole must appear every six months before the supervision committee.”