Offender rehabilitation is high on the metro’s agenda

The purpose of the visit was for the mayor and officials was to get a better understanding of the current rehabilitation process, to enable the metro to formulate a new strategy to assist the centre with rehabilitation offenders, and preventing recidivism.

Speaking about preventing juvenile delinquency during the visit, Gungubele said by getting involved in children’s lives early, later crimes can be effectively reduced, because once the risk factors are lessened, behavioural problems are much less likely to occur.

The mayor stated that effective programmes that prevent deviant behaviour among children are ones that intervene before the onset of delinquent behaviour.

“Early childhood development (ECD) is very critical in our efforts to dissuade youngsters from living a life of crime. This process teaches young people self-worth, helps unearth their talents and create self-awareness in terms of the child’s strengths. They positively stop crime from happening in the first place,” said Gungubele.

He continued to lay great stress on the importance of skill acquisition from an early age, good parenting and self discovery.

“Self discovery, self-esteem and good parenting are the best thing that a child needs to handle peer pressure. They alleviate some of the risk factors associated with delinquency and antisocial behaviour, and have lasting effects on socially competent behaviour. Children, who lack self-esteem, model their behaviour on their peers, regardless of whether their peers’ behaviours are good or bad. They will want to be accepted and recognised by their peers and they will act accordingly to be liked,” explained Gungubele.

Gungubele said during their school days they used to have class called hand work, adding that it was during this period that they would try out different skills in amongst others, art and craft, woodwork and sawing among others.

“This subject helped us on our journey to self-discovery at an early age and perhaps the country needs to think about revisiting this in our school curriculum,” suggested Gungubele.

The mayor then appealed to parents to play their part in preventing deviant behaviour among children.

He also appealed to communities to play their role in rehabilitation of inmates and support the reintegration of ex-offenders back into their communities.

“It is important to help offenders achieve a productive lifestyle in order to reduce the rates of recidivism.

“Actually all the hard work that the Correctional Services Ministry is doing would be a waste of time if communities did not get involved. It is important to remember that offenders will eventually return to the communities they come from.

“This then means they must be accepted back,” Gungubele explains.

“However, one of the major problems ex-offenders experience is rejection attached to the stigma of having been arrested and found guilty of a crime. Sadly though, the reality is that if ex-offenders are rejected by their communities and have no role to play in the social and economic activity of that community they revert back to crime and end up behind bars again.”

The mayor feels that communities and community organisations can play a meaningful role in the rehabilitation of former inmates through among others spiritual care, skills development and supporting them to start small businesses so that they have hope for the future.

The visitors were taken on a tour of the facility, including the workshops, bakery and the juvenile centres.

During interaction with juvenile prisoners, Gungubele encouraged them not to lose hope for they still have a bright future ahead of them.

“Do not look at this as the end of the world, but rather as a life lesson that you will take with when you get a second chance out there.”

Meanwhile, the mayor has indicated that the city will in the near future engage with the prison authorities to discuss issues of common interest especially around the economic development for inmates who are plying different trades in the facility.

“This is important and we must put a team in place consisting of the metro and the Boksburg Prison authorities to engage and see how best this can be done. This team will have to put clear terms of reference in place and help in simplifying the partnership.”

Although the state prison was designed to hold 2 859 inmates, 4 410 inmates were confined as of May 28.

Overcrowding has been a longstanding problem in the Boksburg prison.

– @FanieBoksburg