The government intends to review the Criminal Procedure Act with a view to expunging the criminal records of some in order to give criminals “a second chance”.<\/p>\n
Criminal records had a “detrimental effect on successful social integration” the minister of Justice and Correctional Services Michael Masutha told parliament during his budget vote. <\/p>\n
Although the act was reviewed recently, around 2009, Masutha nevertheless said “perhaps it is time to open the dialogue on criminal records”.<\/p>\n
But Masutha said the move would “not compromise public safety” if the focus remains “on those who committed minor and non-violent crimes”. <\/p>\n
Earlier, he told a media briefing that offenders could apply to have their records expunged 10 years after the offence was committed. He said this period might even be reduced.<\/p>\n
“Ten years can be a lifetime, especially to a young person,” Masutha said.<\/p>\n
The DA’s James Selfe supported the obvious new measures to scrub South Africa’s high crime stats: “We believe that a criminal record is a powerful inhibitor to being integrated back into society.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The government intends to review the Criminal Procedure Act with a view to expunging the criminal records of some in order to give criminals “a second chance”. Criminal records had a “detrimental effect on successful social integration” the minister of Justice and Correctional Services Michael Masutha told parliament during his budget vote. Although the act … Continue reading “ANC, DA want to scrub SA’s crime stats”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":19046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[34,1214,11758,11756,40,11757,11759],"class_list":["post-19045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-crime","tag-crime-stats","tag-criminal-record","tag-high-crime-rate","tag-murder","tag-petty-offenders","tag-social-integration"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/gangsa.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19047,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19045\/revisions\/19047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}