Justice for Prisoners and Detainees Trust founder Derrick Mdluli said that during the Covid-19 lockdown it had been a challenge throughout the country to get prisoners to appear in court on scheduled days.
“At lockdown level 5, 4 and 3 they were hardly taking prisoners to court. It is a mission to get prisoners to court. We had to go to court to demand a requisition for a prisoner to be brought to court to lodge his appeal,” he said.
He said he was considering approaching the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Ronald Lamola, to ask him to intervene as the delays were a “gross violation” of prisoners’ human rights. He said the minister should consider releasing, under strict conditions, prisoners who had committed petty offences such as theft. He added that prisoners’ rights were also being violated because they were not allowed to have family visits during lockdown level 3.
He added that Lamola had issued a directive in terms of regulation 4 under the Disaster Management Act on June 22 to address, prevent and combat the spread of Covid-19 in prisons “where offenders are able to appear in courts under strict management by SAPS”. However, he said any possible inconsistency in the system where some prisoners might be able to access the courts and others were not, was a problem.
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