Oscar is a correctional supervision candidate

“His [Pistorius’s] behaviour could be successfully modified within the community context,” social worker for the correctional services department Mashaba Joel Maringa said.

“It is recommended that the honourable court should consider correctional supervision…”

He said Pistorius should be sentenced to three years of correctional supervision.

The defence asked Maringa to compile a report on Pistorius.

Maringa said some of the conditions proposed are that Pistorius should be placed under house arrest with due conditions. The house arrest should be re-adjusted after a portion of the sentence was served.

“It is recommended that the accused should perform community service for 16 hours in a month.”

Community service would be general work and Pistorius should be moved to general domestic work at a later stage, said Maringa.

Pistorius should be allowed to go to work, go to home and not allowed to travel unless he arranged it previously.

Maringa went over Pistorius’s family life and his relationships with his parents and siblings.

“He is the middle child and the other two [are] his brother and younger sister – the relationship [with them] is smooth based on mutual understanding,” he said.

“He lost his mother…and his relationship with his father is considered sour.”

Pistorius’s brother Carl, sister Aimee and father Henke were all in court on Monday.

The athlete was a candidate for correctional supervision because he never had a criminal record before this.

He said Pistorius was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder after the shooting.

“The accused explained himself as a social drinker taking beer on social occasions,” he said.

Pistorius denied taking drugs other than medication, said Maringa.

“The accused will benefit from correctional supervision,” he said.

Pistorius’s life could be restructured and modified to “produce the expected outcome” because of his age.

It would also allow Pistorius to become financially independent again.

“The accused should be declared unfit to posses firearms,” said Maringa.

“There should be strict conditions prevalent in correctional supervision.”

On September 12 Pistorius was found guilty of the culpable homicide of his girlfriend, model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp, but not guilty of her murder.

Judge Thokozile Masipa found him guilty of discharging a firearm in public, when he shot from his friend Darren Fresco’s Glock pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, in January 2013.

Pistorius had claimed he thought there was a burglar in his toilet when he fired four shots through the locked door in the early hours of February 14 last year, killing Steenkamp. The State had argued he killed her during an argument.

Pistorius was also found not guilty on two firearms-related charges –illegal possession of ammunition, and shooting through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012.

– Sapa

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