Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has called for cellphone signal-blocking technology to be rolled out at Pollsmoor prison, warning criminals are using mobile phones behind bars to co-ordinate extortion rackets.
Hill-Lewis said on Friday he had written to correctional services minister Pieter Groenewald after being informed that crime was being directed from inside the prison.
“The city has received various reports that crime and extortion activity is being co-ordinated by phone from within Pollsmoor. On a recent roads project inspection in Bishop Lavis, I was informed that the contractor had left the site due to extortion threats made by phone call from an underworld figure inside Pollsmoor,” said Hill-Lewis.
“This shows we must do more than just jail criminals, we have to prevent their ability to co-ordinate crime from within prisons. I have written to the minister to offer the city’s full support to pilot sophisticated signal-blocking tech at Pollsmoor. We have to flip the switch on cellphones in prisons, and we welcome the minister’s public commitments to cracking down on this.”
He said, besides jamming signals and intercepting communications from underworld figures inside prisons, the minister had also publicly committed to intensifying raids for contraband, including illicit cellphones.
Hill-Lewis said the city had offered support ranging from intelligence-sharing to identify criminal patterns to technical help with installing blocking technology and raising public awareness.
“The city also continues to raise concerns about flaws in the parole system, which enable repeat offenders to continue terrorising communities,” he said.
Safety and security MMC JP Smith called for reform of the parole system.
“City officers regularly encounter incidents of parolees committing repeat offences. It is also common for arrested suspects to return to the streets due to the broken criminal justice system’s inability to secure convictions,” said Smith.
“We continue to call for reforms to the early parole system, and for criminal investigative powers to be devolved to our municipal officers to help SAPS gain more convictions by building prosecution-ready case dockets, especially for gang, gun, drug and extortion-related crime.”
Department of correctional services spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo said: “It is an opinion by the mayor that we have noted as a department. There are a number of interventions already being implemented to root out smuggling and mobile phones in our 243 centres in the country. We are also looking at technological advancements that can assist.”
TimesLIVE
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