Bill delay means no DNA from dangerous criminals

More than 90,000 murderers and rapists released on parole in the past five years went back into society without their DNA samples being taken.

That problem could persist until the South African Police Service (Saps) presents the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill to parliament.

And Saps and President Cyril Ramaphosa face possible court action for failing to sign the Bill before its expiry in 2017.

Civil organisation Action Society had given government until 20 September to rectify things and now intends to head to the courts.

“These legal proceedings are necessary due to [Police Minister] Bheki Cele’s constant failure to bring the Bill to parliament.

“The Bill compels convicted schedule 8 offenders to submit a DNA sample for the population of the national forensic DNA database of South Africa,” said Action Society spokesperson Elanie van der Walt.

While an amendment to the Bill was proposed in 2017 by the national forensic oversight and ethics board to resolve shortcomings in the legislation, with a report to such effect signed by Justice Yvonne Mokgoro in April last year, this amendment needed to be approved by the justice, crime prevention and security (JCPS) cluster during the 2017/18 financial year.

According to Cele’s spokesperson Lirandzu Themba, the Bill was ready to be presented to Cabinet before heading to parliament, but that process stopped.

“It had to be resubmitted to the JCPS cluster as there are new ministers in the cluster that needed to be taken through on the Bill,” she said.

“That process has been completed. The process to get the Bill to be presented before Cabinet and then to parliament will get under way as soon as parliament resumes.”

But Justice Minister Ronald Lamola confirmed in answers to questions in parliament last month that 96,875 convicted schedule 8 offenders have been released since January 2016 without their DNA samples being taken.

This meant they were not included on the national forensic DNA database of convicted offenders.

“They can commit the same offence and we can’t link them to other crimes. This relates to the backlog in DNA testing,” said Action Society’s Ian Cameron.

While Cele had last year announced a plan to eradicate a backlog of 117,738 DNA cases, this number has since increased to more than 230,000.

“If we have the Bill signed and catch up on the DNA backlog, we could be preventing a lot of horrible crimes from happening,” said Cameron.