Parliamentary Question: Dcs: Budget vote

Mr J Selfe (DA) to ask Minister of Correctional Services; Whether, with reference to her statement in her speech on her department’s Budget Vote, she has made any progress in negotiating any prisoner transfer agreements with other countries; if so, what are the relevant details; if not, what (a) impediments are preventing the negotiation of such agreements and (b) action is she taking to overcome the specified impediments?

REPLY

A draft Protocol for Inter-state Transfer of Sentenced Offenders has been developed and tabled for consideration by Member States of the SADC Corrections/Prisons Sub Committee of the Public Security Committee. The Committee has since referred the draft Protocol to Member States for perusal and comments. It is envisaged that the Protocol will be finalised shortly. Since the majority of foreign nationals serving sentences within South African Correctional Centres are from neighbouring countries within the SADC region, the logical starting point for bi-lateral and multi-lateral prisoner
transfer agreements will be with countries within the region.

South Africa has however never adopted a formal policy on prisoner transfer agreements. Before any agreements can be considered such a policy must be adopted. The Departments of International Relations and Cooperation, Police, Home Affairs, Justice and Correctional Services are in the process of drafting a policy on prisoner transfer agreements for presentation to Cabinet.