Judge shocked at the high number of deaths in SA prisons

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Cape Town - More than 550 inmates die in the country’s prisons every year, a seminar on prison deaths has revealed. Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS) spokesperson, Emerantia Cupido, said the statistics were recorded from 2015 to 2018, and show that “annually 533 inmates die in the country’s 243 correctional centres. She said altogether 1 495 natural deaths occurred; 28 unnatural deaths (ie murders); and 78 suicides were reported at correctional centres. These and other statistics, including the cause of death – whether self-inflicted or inmate-on-inmate or official-on-inmate deaths either by way of assault with knives or fists etc – were discussed at the JICS’s Death in Correctional Centres Seminar at the Pietermaritzburg Correctional Centre on Friday. Justice Johann van der Westhuizen stated that “the number of natural and unnatural deaths in correctional centres are just too high”.

The judge explained that inmate-on-inmate deaths and officials-on-inmate deaths were not necessarily incidents of murder, but tended to be classified as murder cases.

“Of the natural deaths, how many of them are the result of tuberculosis?” he asked.

“What emerges is that there needs to be closer co-operation between all stakeholders on after-death investigations involving the correctional centres, the police (when it comes to unnatural deaths), and the National Prosecuting Authority.

“In the event of natural and unnatural deaths, it is important that forensic pathologists rather than doctors carry out post-mortems to better identify the cause of death,” he said.

The majority of inmate deaths recorded were 1 460 males; and 35 females. Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West recorded 25%; followed by the Eastern Cape with 22%; and the Western Cape with 11%.

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