Is South Africa Making Strides in the Participation of Victims of Crime in Parole Processes?

Huge policy and legislative progress has been made in the efforts to include victims in parole hearings in South Africa. Yet many procedural challenges remain.

Published on 14 February 2012 in ISS Today

Tizina Ramagaga, Junior Researcher, Crime and Justice Division, ISS Pretoria 

Recently, there have been a number of cases whereby people convicted for violent crimes have come up for parole in South Africa. The public outcry over these decisions, particularly when victims were not part of the processes to release the offender on parole, is to be expected. In South Africa, victims are entitled to make representations at parole hearings. However, this can be difficult to put into practice.

The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) is expected to play a significant role in safeguarding the rights of victims and offenders by assisting the Correctional Supervision and Parole Board (Parole Boards) in determining an offender’s suitability for parole. The purpose of parole is to assist people who have been convicted of a crime and have served time in prison to reintegrate into their communities once they are released. Parolees are allowed to serve the remainder of their sentence outside of prison under the supervision of a parole officer. It is not uncommon for both the victims of the crime and community members to be concerned when an offender, especially those convicted of violent crimes, becomes eligible for, or is released on parole. This may be out of fear that the parolee might reoffend or because the victim has not fully recovered (physically, psychologically or financially) from the incident. It is for these reasons that victims are allowed to make representation so as to influence parole decisions, and also so that they may be informed of counselling or health services available to them.

Since the 1990s, various strategies and policy resolutions have been developed to assist victims to exercise their rights in the criminal justice process. Examples of this include the Services Charter for Victims of crime in South Africa (Victims Charter) and the minimum standards of services for victims of crime (Minimum Standards). Both elaborate on the services that victims should receive as part of any criminal justice proceedings. These developments are also based on the 1985 United Nations Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power to which South Africa is a signatory. The declaration stipulates the services that should be given to victims of crime when in contact with institutions involved in criminal justice processes.

Victim participation in parole hearings is already supported in legislation such as Section 75 (4) of the Correctional Services Act (No. 111 of 1998), and the Criminal Procedure Act (No. 51 of 1977). Moreover, if a victim is dissatisfied with the decision of the parole board they may also write to the Correctional Supervision Parole Review Board (Parole Review Board). In 2005, the DCS issued specific directives on how complainants could participate in Parole Board hearings. These directives also outline some of the requirements for victims who want to make a submission against the granting of parole.

Victims, in arguing against parole, must state that the impact the crime had on their lives and argue why they are opposed to the release of the offender on parole. Since the issuing of these directives there has been an increase in the number of victims that have made presentations or written submission to the Parole board from 89 in 2009 to 108 in 2010- an increase of 21,4%. In 2011, the DCS set a target of ensuring that 265 victims make representations to parole boards and almost achieved it as 253 victims did so. For the current financial year, the DCS set a far more ambitious target of assisting 530 victims to make representations.

Nevertheless, practical challenges in this regard remain for both the department and victims. At a  conference hosted by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development on 1 February with the intention of assessing the implementation of the Victims Charter, a number of concerns on victim participation in parole hearings were raised. For example, the directives state that victims wanting to make a representation to a Parole Board first apply in writing as to why they wish to make representation and include the name and case number of the offender in the application. Given the high levels of illiteracy in South Africa, such a requirement poses a prohibitive burden on many victims. According to non-governmental and community based organisations that offer services to victims of crime, some of their clients are unable to obtain some of the information required by the application which deters them from writing to the Parole Board. It was suggested that the directives should be simplified to allow victims to simply inform the chairperson of the relevant Parole Board of their interest to attend and make a representation, as stipulated in section 75 (4) of the DCS Act without having to submitting additional information about the offender.

A challenge facing the DCS consists of being able to locate the victims that have made requests to make representations. Sometimes, victims may change address and contact details in the years between indicating that they would want to be notified of a parole hearing and the time it takes place. The DCS noted that while it had ‘a database of organisations involved in attending to victim needs’, they did not have a database of the victims themselves. To address this, it was recommended that a centralised database of victims containing all contact details be created and all criminal justice departments contribute to the database.