Parliament, Friday, 21 November 2025 – The Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services welcomed the briefing it received today from the management of Pollsmoor Correctional Facility on the implementation of its recommendations following its April 2025 oversight at the facility.
The committee first embarked on a walkabout that included the remand detainees admission system, where it received a detailed briefing on the erroneous release of inmates and the stabbing of officials, and the death of three inmates. During the walkabout, the committee noted the absence of security features, such as CCTV cameras and panic buttons, at the remand detainees' facility.
Had those features been there, according to the committee, the inmates would not have even attempted to apply the plan they tried, which resulted in the fight between them and the correctional officials, and the death of three inmates in the end. The committee said the inmates noted weaknesses in the system first and inadvertently tried their luck to escape, as no one wants to be in prison.
The committee heard from the presentation that there is an investigation that is underway, and which, according to the management, is 90% complete. Although the committee welcomed the report about the investigation, it expressed its unacceptance of the management’s attribution of the erroneous escape of the inmates to the failure of the biometric fingerprinting device and the nonexistence of ink for the manual fingerprint option.
The committee highlighted the suspicion of the involvement of correctional officials in all forms of crime that riddle the facility. It is correctional officials who open the system for criminality by becoming agents of inmates that include gangs, who keep their link with criminals outside through correctional officials.
Hearing from the presentations made by the management to the committee, the Chairperson of the committee, Ms Kgomotso Ramolobeng, said that given the weaknesses in the system and the suspected participation of correctional officials in that, there may be more inmates who escaped or were erroneously released at Pollsmoor Correctional facility.
The chairperson called for a strong and effective strategy to change that situation and for consequence management for any responsible correctional official. She urged the correctional officers to ensure that the regrettable incident of the death of inmates doesn’t reoccur.
The chairperson urged the management to fill all the funded vacancies at the facility. She thanked the investigation teams for their investigations and encouraged them to accelerate those investigations. She appealed for support to the area commissioner and unity among the entire Pollsmoor Correctional Centre community. She discouraged the tendency to grandstand with each other.
The chairperson also told the management that the committee is expecting the reports on all investigations and progress on its recommendations at its first meeting with the management in 2026.
ISSUED BY THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMUNICATION SERVICES ON BEHALF OF THE CHAIRPERSON OF THE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON CORRECTIONAL SERVICES, MS KGOMOTSO RAMOLOBENG.
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