Browsing by Author "Ballard, Clare"

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    Are the rights of children paramount in prison legislation?
    (Juta Law, 2013) Muntingh, Lukas; Ballard, Clare
    The principle, the rights of the child shall be of paramount importance in all decisions affecting the child, is established firmly in international law and, accordingly, reflected in the Constitution. Constitutional jurisprudence acknowledges the notion that children are physically and psychologically more vulnerable than adults and thus require treatment that is different from adults when they come into conflict with the law. It is this differentiation that lies at the heart of the Child Justice Act 75 of 2008, the legislation that sets out the criminal procedure specific to the needs of children, as well as the principle that children’s exposure to the criminal justice system should be limited wherever possible. The Correctional Services Act 111 of 1998 predates the Child Justice Act by approximately ten years – a period when legislators were perhaps less attuned to the needs of children in conflict with the law. When examined against the requirements of s 28(2) of the Constitution, there are, unfortunately, a number of shortcomings in the Correctional Services Act in relation to sentence administration and remand detention. These are discussed according to the following themes: (1) remand detention of children and how this is regulated by the Correctional Services Act and the Child Justice Act; (2) sentence administration with specific reference to the parole regime; (3) conditions of detention with reference to the privilege system and access to services.
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    Lessons from the past: Remand detention and pre-trial services
    (Institute for Security Studies (ISS), 2013) Ballard, Clare
    A 1997 project established by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based non-government organisation, aimed to alleviate overcrowding in South African prisons by assisting magistrates in bail proceedings and thereby decreasing the number of admissions into awaiting trial facilities. Understanding the context in which the project operated leads to the important observation that efforts to launch and sustain discrete experiments in justice innovation will necessarily come under strain when faced with aggressively adverse macro circumstances, like the ones that faced Vera's pre-trial project. However, the legal and social milieu has changed over the last twelve years. It is perhaps time to once again explore how innovations in criminal justice administration (a much-needed initiative) might best work in the various criminal justice management areas, given the discrete circumstances of each.