South Africa under fire over prisoner release

Reuters:

South Africa’s plan to release thousands of inmates from its seriously overcrowded prisons has come in for criticism after a freed prisoner was arrested for raping a toddler.

South Africa has since June released more than 30,000 prisoners under a program officials say is aimed at rehabilitation, angering opposition MPs who said it undermined the justice system. A further 33,000 were freed from parole.

Justice analysts say the releases will ease serious overcrowding in South Africa’s prisons, some of them now at three times capacity in a country with one of the highest crime rates in the world.

But the program ran into controversy when a man released earlier this year was re-arrested last week for raping a three-year-old girl.

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