Download Expenditure trends and spending priorities for the Department of

Expenditure trends and spending priorities for
the Department of Correctional Services
Report to the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services
20 April 2011
ISS, CSPRI, NICRO
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Purpose of the report
•
•
•
Response to request by Chair of Portfolio
Committee last year
Civil society initiative to provide more detailed
input
Process funded by the OSF and involved ISS,
NICRO and CSPRI and utilised skills of
economist with experience in working with
treasury
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What the report does
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Provides an analysis of the DCS budget
•
Identifies the drivers of cost in the DCS
•
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Attempts to cost rehabilitation programmes –
were they to be rolled out nationally and be
based on international ‘best-practice’
Demonstrates that within the current budget
and facilities provision of rehabilitation
programmes is not possible
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Key issues
•
Report highlights two issues:
–
–
Policy shifts are required in order to improve the
‘return on investment’ to society that results from
incarceration of those who are convicted of crime
The policy shifts that are required involve all
departments in the criminal justice system and
require dramatic re-assessment of the focus of the
DCS
Require a radical re-thinking of the role of
4/21/11incarceration in society
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Keeping it in perspective
•
•
In 2011/12 SA will spend R16,8 billion keeping
160 000 offenders in prison
In the same year we will spend R13,8 billion
educating all learners in SA from Grade R to
matric
Incarceration is expensive – and getting the
policy right to ensure minimal but effective
use of incarceration as a sentencing option
and ensuring that DCS delivers the best
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Presentation outline
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•
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Basic facts regarding spending levels and
patterns in DCS
What drives costs in the DCS
Impact of the White Paper on the work of the
DCS and financial implications of full
implementation
Policy choices and implications
Conclusions and recommendation
•
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Basic facts about spending on
corrections
•
•
2010/11 DCS budget was R15,2bn – 37%
higher than 2007/8
DCS budget will rise by a further 23% between
current year and 2013/2014
•
This is a 69% growth since 2007/8
•
But this growth must be contextualised
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Basic facts about spending on
corrections
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Contextualising the growth in
the DCS budget
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•
•
If the DCS budget had grown at the same rate
at the police budget it would be some R1,1bn
higher than it is now, or R700 million larger –
if one removed the cost of the 4 new PPPs
DCS budget as a share of national budget is
projected to fall from 2,1% in 2007/8 to 1,8%
of national budget in 2013/14.
Not a bad thing, but just worth noting
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Interpreting the budget
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Functional breakdown of the budget by
programmes:
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–
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Administration: core administrative and financial
support
Security: pays for the guarding of prisoners
Corrections: pays for the staff needed to develop
sentence plans
Care: provides for the physical and psychological
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–
Programme allocations
•
•
34% of the budget each year is spent on
Security
26% is spent on Administration
•
12% is spent on Facilities
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11% is spent on Care
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9% is spent on Corrections, and
3% each on Development and Social
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Reintegration
•
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Interpreting the budget
•
Another, perhaps more useful way to
breakdown the budget is by economic
classification:
–
–
about 66% = personnel costs
28% = goods and services (incl leases, property
payments, medicines, food and outsourced
services)
7% on physical infrastructure (but this varies between 5% and 11% between 2007/8 and
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2013/14)
–
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Misleading analyes
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•
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Discussions about costs sometimes frames on
basis of daily cost incurred by accommodating
a prisoner:
–
2010/11 average cost was R259
–
2007/8 average cost R198 (26% lower)
This may mistakenly be used to make
assumptions about cost effectiveness
BUT, the DCS budget varies depending on the
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Misleading analyses
•
Such an analysis is mistaken:
–
•
Impact of infrastructure spend can distort the
figures
Consider the effect that the R455 million that
would have been allocated in 2013/14 for the
PPP facilities would have had on the
calculation of average daily cost of
incarceration per prisoner
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What drives costs in DCS?
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Three factors driving costs in DCS:
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Prisoner numbers
Range and quality of services DCS provides to
prisoners (including accommodation, nutrition,
medical treatment, safetyand security and so on)
Changes in characteristics of prisoners may
change the costs e.g. ATDs require more
administrative handling, more escorts too and
from courts
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– Cost
of services provided (fundamentally this
What drives prisoner numbers?
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Four variables:
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Crime rate
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Quality of policing and prosecution services
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Laws and court practices regarding granting of bail
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Sentencing regime
While parliament and other role players can
have an influence over these, the influence of
DCS over these variables is limited
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Prisoner numbers
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Rapid growth in prisoner numbers between
1995 and 2003
Since 2003 prisoner numbers have remained
stable
Since 2006 the daily average prisoner
population (including ATDs) has varied
between 159 000 and 165 000
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Cost drivers: prisoner numbers
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Why are prisoner numbers
stable?
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•
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Perhaps surprising if one considers the high
rate of crime, and violent crime in particular
Also massive growth in police numbers - by
66 000 since 2003
So, either fewer criminals making their way
through the justice system OR they are
receiving shorter sentences
Latter, not true (see the following graph)
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Black line shows the average sentence length – which has risen from 4.4 to
7.3 years since 1995
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•
•
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This is a consequence of minimum
sentencing legislation
So, DCS fortunate that the rest of the
criminal justice sector is not functioning
optimally
15 year review by the Presidency found
that the number of convictions in SA
courts fell from 96 000 in 2006 to 75 000
on 2008 (see the following graph).
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Same research found that the conviction rate for
serious crimes committed between 2001 and 2006
varied between 20% of all murders reported to police
and 2% of car thefts
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SAPS ARREST TRENDS 2003 2010
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Total arrests increased by 24%.
12
•
Arrests for priority crimes increased by 9%
10
8
Number
6
4
2
0
Financial Year
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Implication for DCS
The number of newly admitted prisoners has
fallen by over 44% since 2004, so:
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Number of prisoners has stabilised
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Turnover of prisoners has reduced
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Prisoners tend to stay in prison for much
longer
Were the CJS functioning optimally, DCS would
be in serious crisis
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What drives costs in DCS?
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Personnel costs are another driver of costs in
DCS
Personnel costs determined by:
Number of staff
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Remuneration of staff
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Personnel costs
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DCS, like other government departments has
little control over agreements reached in
Public Services Bargaining Chamber
Rapid increases in average remuneration of
civil servants in the past few years
7-day week should have resulted in savings
but there is no certainty that it is effective,
practical or results in actual savings
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How do we know the DCS
budget is under pressure?
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•
Vacant posts frozen after 2007 wage
agreement resulting in 2% decline in staff
numbers (from 41 000 in 2007/8 to 40 260 in
September 2010)
Reduction in spending on a range of nonessential issues (e.g. fleet services, use of
outside IT consultants, advertising etc)
This is not unreasonable – DCS should have
done this anyway but WHY is the budget
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Has DCS increased the quality
or quantity of services to
prisoners?
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DCS committed to delivering services in terms
of the White Paper
Has been an increase in sentence plans from
9836 in 2007/8 to 95 000 projected for
2013/14 (but 40 000 completed in 2010)
No substantial increase in literacy training
projected (annual 4 500)
No significant increase in skills development
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Has DCS increased the quality
or quantity of services to
prisoners?
•
Also, no significant changes in staff
complement – so broad commitments not
been reflected in staffing allocations (see the
next graph)
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The same point can be made by looking at projected
growth between different programmes. Those that grow
the slowest are Development, Corrections and Social
Reintegration
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Services?
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•
2011 DCS budget shows that ‘Security’ will
grow faster than Development, Corrections,
Social Reintegration and Care
Also, consider that only prisoners with
sentences of over 24 months qualify for
sentence plans which represents a reduction
of services since 2008 (amendment of the
Correctional Services Act).
Impact of this decision  70% of those
•
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Consequence of this is that DCS acts as a
revolving door for prisoners coming in,
spending short periods of time in prison
and then leaving - at a high administrative
cost
So, we are not actually seeing an increase
or improvement in services – thus the
biggest driver of cost, since prisoner
numbers have remained the stable is the
cost of staff remuneration
This has driven DCS to the point where it
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cannot realistically plan and deliver high•
Implementing the White Paper
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•
So, lets try to establish what implementing the
White Paper will cost
Based on international literature, effective
rehabilitation programmes have several key
features in common
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Features of effective
programmes
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Community-based rather than prison-based
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Intensive (at least 6 months long)
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Focus on high risk individuals
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Risk levels determined by sophisticated
instruments
Cognitive behavioural techniques used
Matching of therapist and substance of
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programme to specific offenders
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Factors influencing cost
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•
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The number of prisoners who qualify to
receive such interventions
The number of months over which the typical
intervention will take place
The ratio of recipients of these interventions
to the number of professionals providing the
services (which, for ease of expression, we will
call ‘class size’)
The proportion of the day that each ‘class’ will
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Calculation
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Possible to calculate:
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How many ‘classes’ annually
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Number of professionals involved
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Cost of professionals
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Number of prisoners receiving interventions:
60 000 (based on interventions only to those
sentenced to more than 24 months)
Intervention classes will last 6 months
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Estimated cost of rehabilitation
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Other costs (not calculated)
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Increased administrative capacity required
(add 25%)
Development of risk assessment and
predictive tools
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Infrastructure costs
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Additional resources
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These could double the costs presented in the
Implications of the costing
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If DCS were to deliver services to 66 000
prisoners, the least possible cost would be
R1bn, i.e. a R1bn increase to the existing
budget – which doesn’t sound unreasonable
But, are such programmes effective and
practical AND is this the right policy approach?
Current challenges relate to housing all
prisoners humanely and ensuring safety and
security in prisons
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Additional questions
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Will or can these really reduce the amount of
crime committed by prisoners after their
release?
How certain can we be of that this will occur
and that the reason for the decline will be the
programmes the DCS offers rather than simply
the amount of time prisoners spend in prison
and the fact they’ve aged in the process?
Is it even possible to rehabilitate prisoners
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Recommendations
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Policy revision, to include:
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Is there value in passing custodial sentences of 24
months or less, given that this category of prisoner
spends a relatively short time in prison, receives no
services during that time, but probably costs the
department a great deal in terms of administration –
and makes up 70% of all releases annually.
Whether minimum sentencing legislation is
appropriate and can achieve the objective of deterring
crime.
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– Whether
the DCS should be offering rehabilitation
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