Cape Town - A recent report by Africa Criminal Justice Reform (ACJR) detailing the impact of the Covid-19 restrictions on criminal justice and human rights, has found that government measures pertaining to the pandemic have resulted in a decrease in the number of prison inmates in South Africa.
The report was based on research in five African countries, Malawi, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia, and focused on the constitutional and legal provisions for dealing with the pandemic, and how states used the regulatory frameworks to deal with criminal justice.
The ACJR’s Professor Lukas Muntingh in presenting the findings said that from their research it became clear that the economic impact of the regulations would have a long-term effect on the poor.
“Numerous instances were encountered where the rule and its consequent enforcement simply did not make sense to the ordinary public and were perceived to be irrational and void of logic.
“Irrational rules and/ or irrational enforcement diminishes trust in the state and in particular in the enforcement agencies.”
ACJR researcher Kristen Petersen said: “The implementation of Covid-19 mitigation measures created additional challenges for the criminal justice systems in the countries surveyed.”
She said as South Africa tried to deal with criminal matters based on “urgency”, the pandemic had created confusion about what “urgency” meant, which led to inconsistency in the hearing of cases and excluding cases that should have been considered as urgent.
“This situation infringed both on victims’ rights to justice and on accused persons’ due process and fair trial rights,” said Petersen.
The report noted that remissions of low-risk inmates’ sentences that had been implemented in May, 2020 and December, 2019 made a significant impact on the prevalent issue of overcrowding in South African prisons.
“The overall result from both remissions, as well as other factors that could impact on the criminal justice process, was a significant decline in the total prison population,” it said.
The report concluded that by using murder statistics as a way to gauge the safety of citizens, that there had been an increase in murder cases.
“While in the pre-pandemic era the quarterly number of murders recorded never breached 6 000 per quarter. By the final quarter of 2021 the number almost breached 7 000.
“This is a large increase which cannot be attributed to population growth. Citizens are accordingly much less safe than they were before the imposition of the restrictions, and the use of the police in enforcing them,” the report said.