South Africa has the world's seventh highest number of prisoners - outranking countries with up to nearly five times our population.
The World Prison Brief places South Africa's total of 166 267 prisoners after the United States (2,3-million inmates), China (1,6-million), Russia (888 014), Brazil (419 551), India (358 368) and Mexico (217 436).
The populations of the top six countries on the list range from 104-million in Mexico to 1,3-billion people in China - with a combined total of 3-billion people.
South Africa has just 47,8-million citizens.
Gideon Morris, director of the Cape Town-based Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons, said: "Our rate of imprisonment is much higher than any other country in Africa, as well as one of the highest in the world.
Continues Below ↓
"We use the quick fix: throw them into prison."
The latest figures show that it costs R69 000 annually to house a prisoner.
Sixty-eight percent of all sentenced prisoners are serving a sentence of five or more years.
And inmates serving life sentences rose from 793 in 1999 to a current figure of 7 574.
"One must look at the direct cost to the taxpayer," said Morris. "In 1997 we were spending R3,7-billion annually on running prisons. Last year we spent almost R12-billion."
The World Prison Brief is published by the International Centre for Prison Studies at Kings College in London.
It lists South Africa and Botswana with Africa's highest ratio of prisoners to total population, followed by Namibia and Libya.
However, South Africa sits at number 24 worldwide with 348 prisoners for every 100 000 of its people.
The US again heads the list with 751 prisoners for every 100 000 of its national population.
South Africa had the most prisoners in Africa, while Rwanda, the second highest, had half the number, with 82 000 behind bars.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
