Need to rethink our prison system

The recent letter from H Frahm, “Criminals need to feel pain” (December 17), refers.

While I don’t doubt that many people feel very strongly about crime and punishment, there are limits imposed on us by our constitution, and the imposition of pain and lots of it on criminals is never going to float.

We have a strong call for the reimposition of the death penalty, which if it went to a referendum would be a close finish either way.

The ban on the death penalty will always be swayed by the possibility of executing an innocent person, though there have been cases where the guilty person was proved 150% guilty and received a life sentence.

I don’t condone the stoning or burning to death of suspects by kangaroo courts, but these acts in themselves point to a growing frustration with the justice system in SA.

The anti-death penalty supporters would hopefully also be anti-abortion as well.

You can’t worry about executing an innocent person but happily abort an innocent child, whatever the definition.

So we are stuck with an ever-growing population of lifers, and given both the increase in shocking rapes of children and old women, the prisons are going to be overflowing with these miscreants, if not already doing so.

The cost of keeping these criminals where they enjoy three square meals and board is enormous and I guess one argument for the taxpayer forking out for it is that we keep ourselves safe.

But sometimes it seems to me that the concepts of punishment and rehabilitation get blurred.

It seems to me that the issue of rehabilitation of serious offenders is on the cards before the issue of punishment has even been commenced.

I believe that where a sentence of 15 years or so is met- ed out, then a minimum of the first third of that sentence should be devoted to punishment. You cannot have a killer pleading remorse from day one and not spending some time facing punishment for his wrongdoing.

Yes, there is the argument that the person is behind bars and not enjoying social interaction, but that is not real punishment. What happened to the old idea of hard labour?

Unconstitutional! But what about the constitutional rights of the victim or victims?

Perhaps it is time to put small crime offenders to work in doing things that our vast pool of unemployed do not want to do.

There are vast tracts of Port Jacksons in and around Port Elizabeth that need to be cut down and destroyed.

There are many areas where waste needs to be collected and areas cleaned up.

The animal welfare groups could use some help in cleaning and maintenance.

Why not offer these shorttime prisoners time off their sentence in lieu of time worked on things outside the prison walls?

We need to start to think out of the box about our judicial system, and soon.

Malcolm Dodds

Kunene Park, Port Elizabeth