'Jail time at home for moms'
By Siyabonga Mkhwanazi
The government wants to send young mothers in prison home, to return later to serve the rest of their terms once their children have grown.
The Minister of Correctional Services, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, has stirred a hornet's nest by proposing to Parliament a deferred sentence system to allow convicted mothers to serve a portion of their sentence under correctional supervision while raising their offspring.
Once these mothers had raised their children to a certain age, they would be taken back into to custody to serve the remainder of the incarceration period, she told the National Assembly's committee on correctional services yesterday.
This was one of the bills the department of correctional services was currently working on, which it could bring to Parliament next year.
The minister told MPs she was aware that her proposal would spark huge public debate and she was willing to discuss it with non-government organisations and other important role players at correctional services.
She said she knew that some women were in jail for grave offences including murder. But she wanted the country to understand that the state needed to act in the best interests of the child.
"These are the things we are looking at. There will consultation with the NGOs. For me it's not about the mothers, but the child."
"We are open to views by different people. I am looking at what is there. I am looking at transforming that situation for the best for the child.
"We are aware that some of these girls have committed serious crimes. It's not people you can easily let loose into our society," said Mapisa-Nqakula.
The minister said it was disconcerting to see young girls and women raising their children in an uncomfortable prison life.
"(It is) not that we do not recognise the grave crimes against (sic) them. It's abnormal to punish a child because the mother has committed a crime," she told the multi-party committee.
The Democratic Alliance's spokesman on correctional services, James Selfe, said he was concerned that some female inmates may abuse the system.
When still on trial, they may deliberately fall pregnant in the knowledge that they would not be immediately imprisoned on conviction.
"My problem with a deferred sentence (is that) there is an incentive to remain pregnant," he said, citing a case of a woman serving a 17-year sentence for murder and arson at Pollsmoor who was released for two weeks and within that period fell pregnant.
ANC MP Ben Fihla proposed that correctional services should study different models around the world on how some countries dealt with convicted mothers.
Fihla said in Denmark female offenders serving jail terms with their young babies were incarcerated in specially designed facilities with a friendly, family environment.
