Durban - In about two weeks, Oscar Pistorius will leave his jail cell at Kgosi Mampuru II, the old Pretoria Central Prison, after serving 10 months of the five-year sentence for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
He is coming out as a probationer and will have to adhere to a myriad conditions, although the Correctional Services Department declined to divulge them.
The department’s deputy commissioner of communications, Manelisi Wolela, said the department was “mandated by law to manage and maintain a system applicable to sentenced offenders”, with regards to release from correctional centres and placement under correctional supervision.
“All people subjected to community correction must be supervised in the community by correctional officials,” Wolela said.
“Such supervision must not invade the privacy of the person concerned more than is necessary, to ensure compliance with the conditions of the community corrections imposed.
“To this end, the department does not publicly disclose specific details about individual offenders,” Wolela said.
Wolela said there were currently 230 000 offenders and awaiting-trial people, of which 51 963 were parolees and 17 061 probationers.
Pistorius was sentenced in terms of 276 (1) (i) of the Criminal Procedure Act. Wolela added that Section 73(7) (a) of the Correctional Services Act said that an offender, sentenced in terms of Section 276, had to serve at least one sixth of his or her sentence (which was 10 months in Pistorius’s case), before being considered for correctional supervision.
Conditions relating to this could stipulate that:
* The person be placed under house detention.
* Does community service.
* Seeks employment.
* Takes up and remains in employment.
* Takes part in treatment, development and support programmes.
* Is restricted to one or more magisterial districts.
* Lives at a fixed address.
* Refrains from using alcohol or illegal drugs.
* Refrains from committing a criminal offence.
* Refrains from visiting a particular place.
* Refrains from making contact with a particular person or persons.
* Refrains from threatening a particular person or persons by word or action.
* Is subject to monitoring (this could be electronic monitoring).
Daily News