Unsentenced prisoners cost South Africans over R27 million per day

South Africa’s failure to expedite the sentencing of prisoners housed in correctional facilities is not only creating a problem of overcrowding but also costing taxpayers nearly R28 million a day.

Minister of Correctional Services, Dr Pieter Groenewald, revealed that there are 167,343 inmates in the country’s prisons, more than a third of whom (59,887) are remand detainees.

A remand detainee is someone who has been arrested and charged with a crime but is being held in custody while awaiting trial.

In a recent interview with BizNews, Groenewald revealed that it costs South Africa R463 per day to keep someone in prison.

This means that it costs R27.7 million to keep the country’s unsentenced inmates in correctional facilities.

African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) Member of Parliament (MP) Steve Swart previously argued that many of these prisoners could be facing bail amounts significantly lower than the cost of keeping them in prison.

“We believe that not enough is being done to expedite criminal trials and that has an impact on the remand detainees who are costing the state hundreds of rands per day,” he said.

“When we travelled to the Free State, we found a remand detainee owed bail of R100, but it costs significantly more per day to keep them in remand detention.”

According to a report by the Auditor General on the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, there was a backlog of 37,497 criminal cases in the country’s Regional Magistrates’ courts as of 31 March 2024.

This increased to 37,838 by 30 June and to 38,234 by the end of August.

The country’s District Magistrates’ courts face a similar problem, with the former Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Thembi Simelane, pointing to a 14,683-case backlog at the end of August last year.

In addition to the court case backlog, South Africa is also facing a DNA backlog, which was reported to be as high as 140,000 in March this year.

“This crisis is a direct threat to an effective criminal justice system that can process and prosecute criminals and efforts to combat gender-based violence,” said Democratic Alliance MP Ian Cameron.

Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia told uMkhonto we Sizwe MP Wesly Douglas that 114,641 entries of this backlog had been finalised and processed as of 17 September 2025.

However, the Minister stated that the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) continues to experience an influx of cases received for analysis, but did not reveal whether the backlog had worsened.

Despite this, Cachalia says that the FSL has prioritised gender-based violence and femicide related reports.

The problem of overcrowding

Several of South Africa’s correctional facilities face the problem of overcrowding, which puts both inmates and security staff in these prisons at additional risk.

A report from the Department of Correctional Services, presenting macro trends at a national level, found that there were 163,179 prisoners in South African prisons, which only have a national capacity of 107,067, as of Q1 2025/26.

This puts the country’s overcrowding level at 52%. Currently, the number of sentenced prisoners is only 390 more than the country’s prison capacity.

For instance, Groenewald explained that the Oudtshoorn Correctional Facility, which accommodates remand and sentenced offenders, is at 232% of capacity.

It is only approved to accommodate 303 prisoners, yet houses 232 remand detainees and 472 sentenced detainees.

The report, presented to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services, identified chronic overcrowding as a significant contributor to unnatural deaths in prisons.

It found that there had been 156 unnatural deaths in correctional facilities over the past three years, 67 of which were suicides and 55 homicides.

Groenewald said in September that his Department is implementing the bed space creation programme, which will see the construction of facilities to accommodate roughly 13,500 beds at prisons across the country.

“In terms of the Master Infrastructure Plan, a combination of both sentenced and unsentenced category construction projects is envisaged,” Groenewald said.