Abstract
“A transparent and thorough offender intake assessment process should be used in the current correctional approach, resulting in effective offender intake strategies.”
According to Correctional Services Minister Sbu Ndebele, the South African prison population ranks highest in Africa and ninth in the world with approximately 160,000 inmates (“Ndebele,” 2013). Approximately 30% of those prisoners await trial (Cruywagen, 2013). The majority of South African prisoners are poor male adults, 18 years and older, whose poverty is often compounded by racial discrimination. Therefore, not surprisingly, they have inadequate schooling (also see Yates & Frolander-Ulf, 2001). The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) mandates all inmates without a qualification equivalent to Grade 9 to complete Adult Education Training Levels 1 to 4, including children 15 years and younger, and all individuals sentenced to imprisonment. In 2013, Mokoele reported that 10,049 members of the total prison population were engaged in some form of education or training. In June 2013, 140 correctional centers had adult education training programs with enrollment headcount of 11,600.
The DCS efforts in South Africa indicate that provision for justice and protection of the public are fundamental concerns. Notwithstanding room for improvement, this country’s sentencing and corrections policies have been designed with the goals of preventing offenders’ continued and future criminal activity. The government’s approach to sentencing and corrections leans toward incarceration or rehabilitation, albeit signs of evidence-based strategies that hold offenders accountable, are sensitive to corrections costs, and reduce crime and victimization. Correctional policy makers have identified broad principles whose intended purpose is to provide broad, balanced guidance to corrections applicable to this country.
As seen above, the importance of prisoner education is acknowledged. However, missing is official recognition of this or adult-specific components outlining an upper secondary school adult education diploma entitling holders to apply for higher education. Research highlights accessible and relevant offender data, except for criminal records and demographic information, making it difficult or impossible to access data on an inmate’s work experience, educational level, health status, or life skills (Lawrence, Mears, Dubin, & Travis, 2002; Mokoele, 2013). This article examines current practices as a potential model for other prison systems in the world.
Correctional Sentence Plan and Sentenced Offender Intake Process
Offender correctional sentence plans (CSP) in South Africa comprise six key delivery areas, namely, corrections, development, security, care, facilities, and after-care (DCS, 2004). All these areas are intended to ensure quality service to the offender, to effectively manage the correctional official and their respective centers as well as drastically improve the management relations with accredited external stakeholders and oversight authorities. However, this article will focus on only one area, viz. corrections, while other key delivery areas will be explored in the future.
The CSP aims to help prisoners and officials understand why people offend and what can be done to stop re-offending. The plan also pre-empts offenders from inflicting harm on themselves or others and devises an intervention to reduce the risk of prisoners, some released prior to the official release date, from committing future crimes. However, only prisoners serving sentences longer than 24 months are eligible to have CSP.
The incarceration process forms the basis for the DCS’s engagement with a sentenced offender. The CSP determines prisoner rehabilitative and education interventions during their time in custody and in preparation for their release into the community. During this critical CSP phase, offender educational attainment data could assist with proper assessment. Furthermore, such data support assessing effective implementation.
Recidivism Versus Benefits of Adult Correctional Education Programs
Studies reporting a correlation between greater education and lower recidivism outnumber studies reporting negative conclusions. These studies almost unanimously indicate that education prison programs reduce recidivism and translate into reduced crime (Prisons Studies Project, n.d.) and increased post-release employment. High rates of recidivism, estimated at 95% in South Africa, culminate in high correctional cost (Quan-Baffour & Zawada, 2012). However, with adult correctional education programs, ex-offenders have 43% lower odds of returning to prison (Fantuzzo, 2013). Having a job makes re-offending less likely. Furthermore, education, training, and development guarantee far-reaching implications for the employment opportunities available to formerly incarcerated people reintegrating within society on release.
Human resources capacity to facilitate internally based correctional educational, academic, and vocational programs, building offender self-confidence and skills, can be ensured through, among others, training current offenders to become adult correctional educators (Prisons Studies Project, n.d.). To set programs of this nature in motion, offender assessment and the development of effective CSPs are needed.
Prisoner Rehabilitation and Reintegration Through Education
As part of prisoner rehabilitation and reintegration, the DCS offers formal programs to all sentenced offenders, encompassing general education, further education and training, higher education and training, and computer-based learning (DCS, 2004). Prison systems typically provide and manage such learning interventions, funded by official correctional department budgets, private organizations (e.g., colleges, non-profits), and prisoners or their families, through a correspondence program.
In South Africa, not-for-profit organizations, such as Readucate Trust, have trained correctional officers and illiterate prisoners in various correctional centers. The Trust’s success was partially attributed to sponsorships from financial institutions like banks, culminating in correctional officials calling for similar programs in every correctional facility. The Dream Foundation is another example of a not-for-profit organization reaching out to former and current offenders and encouraging self-empowerment through educational and vocational programs. The Foundation has a facility housing ex-offenders and parolees and offers vocational skills training. Unfortunately, unlike other countries, it is difficult to access data on South Africa inmate participation by gender, age, program, and level.
Recommendations
Adult educators interested in prison policy reform and reduced recidivism rates and illiteracy must consider viable solutions during and post incarceration by forming multilateral and tripartite relationship with post-secondary education institution, such as colleges of education, further education and training colleges, or universities. A transparent and thorough offender intake assessment process should be used in the current correctional approach, resulting in effective offender intake strategies, including correctional officer training to accurately manage the offender intake process. Possible outcomes and suggestions for this type of prison reform program follow.
First, adult education, and education in general, will benefit from additional studies and an integrated re-entry model geared at reducing recidivism and increasing employment possibilities of ex-offenders.
Second, universities must consider supporting engagement efforts with local departments of corrections. Such engagement can take the form of facilitating academic staff/faculty teaching in prisons or students offering workshops or tutoring sessions. Universities must consider publicly advocating for greater access to higher education for all, including the incarcerated. These institutions could build coalitions across institutions to support prison higher education, so the provision of educational programs to incarcerated populations in the community becomes an expected task of all universities.
Third, opportunities through online education programs, which may cost less and be more affordable for prisoners, must be explored.
Fourth, all adult prisoners with more than 6 months to serve and all young prisoners with at least 1 month to serve must have a prepared sentence plan.
Last, external and privately funded agencies must be engaged to facilitate offenders’ smooth transition and reintegration.
It is hoped, in the future, changes in the practice and philosophy of sentencing and corrections will have positive impact on incarceration rates, and the goals of punishment will change for the better for inmates and individuals under correctional supervision.
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author Biography
Matata Mokoele, PhD, is a human resources management practitioner who writes on broad adult education subjects for locally and internationally accredited journals.