Parole System’s Endless Red Tape Delays

Statement by Janho Engelbrecht MP – DA Spokesperson on Correctional Services:

The DA is deeply concerned that South Africa’s parole system reform is caught in a cycle of endless delays and red-tape, and reform is not happening.

In Parliament yesterday the Portfolio Committee on Correction Services, heard that 35% of all parole board posts (73 out of 207) lie vacant, including 41 community member positions, 17 chairpersons, and 15 vice-chairpersons.

In regions like Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and the North West, 19 of 24 posts are unfilled, while key boards in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, and the Free State operate without legal quorums and are forced to borrow members from neighbouring areas merely to function. In Upington, the chairperson post has stood vacant since November 2020.

Minister Pieter Groenewald expressed his personal frustration at this, but while delays go on the Minister himself has alluded to intervening to overturn parole decisions where boards recommend release of offenders explicitly classified as posing a high risk of reoffending.

In a single year, parole boards processed nearly 21 000 cases – but they were relying on a mere 1 350 psychological reports for offenders serving life sentences.

The DA maintains that no matter how many resources are directed into a system that cannot work, it will still not work. This is why a complete, evidence-based redesign of our parole and community corrections system is essential.

Trying to patch up an unworkable, outdated administrative bureaucracy with temporary contract extensions and manual workarounds is a dead end.

While a total structural redesign cannot happen in an instant and must be implemented progressively over time, committee discussions made it painfully clear that meaningful reform is being actively delayed by DCS’s own internal administrative inefficiencies and obstruction by other state departments and independent state entities like SITA, which halted the rollout of a R15 million electronic monitoring initiative.

The DA has already laid out the blueprint for a reformed system, and I will once again send this plan to Minister Groenewald for his attention:

1. Increasing the use of 24/7 GPS tracking, saving billion annually in incarceration costs while ensuring real-time community safety.
2. Professionalised specialist boards: Amending the law to mandate that psychologists, criminologists, and social workers sit on decision-making panels, prohibiting boards from releasing high-risk offenders against expert advice.
3. An independent parole Inspectorate: Creating an independent oversight body reporting directly to Parliament to audit board decisions and enforce accountability.
4. Decoupling overcrowding from release: Enacting an explicit statutory prohibition preventing prison overcrowding from ever being used as a justification for granting parole or remission of sentences.

Finally, the DA firmly rejects departmental attempts to blame underperformance and delayed reforms on “budget constraints”.

Excuses about a lack of funds carry zero weight when previous Portfolio Committee engagements exposed and acknowledged widespread corrupt activities within DCS supply chain management involving hundreds of millions of rands.

If hundreds of millions can be lost to supply chain corruption, DCS cannot hide behind budget cuts while South African communities are subjected to violent reoffending.

South Africans deserves a well-functioning Department of Correctional Services, and that is fundamentally dependent on an effective, transparent, and fair parole system. The DA will continue to fight in Parliament until this evidence-based redesign becomes reality.