Amid concerns that criminal activities are being co-ordinated by cellphones from within Pollsmoor Prison, Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has called for signal-blocking tech.
As a result, the mayor has written to correctional services minister Pieter Groenewald to express his concerns as well as offer the city’s “full support to pilot sophisticated signal-blocking tech” at Pollsmoor, according to a statement.
Says Hill-Lewis: “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 calls from an underworld figure inside Pollsmoor,” explains 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. We have to flip the switch on cellphones in prisons, and we welcome the minister’s public commitments to cracking down on this.”
Besides technology to jam signals and intercept communications from underworld figures inside prisons, Groenewald has also publicly committed to intensify raids on illegal contraband including illicit cellphones in correctional facilities.
On the part of the city, Hill-Lewis has offered its support in various ways, including intelligence-sharing to identify patterns of criminal activity emanating from Pollsmoor, technical and logistical support to install signal blocking technology, and raising public awareness to support these efforts.
According to the city, it continues to raise concerns about flaws in the parole system, which enable repeat offenders to continue terrorising communities.
“City officers regularly encounter incidents of parolees committing repeat offenses. It is also common for arrested suspects to return to the streets due to the broken criminal justice system’s inability to secure convictions.
“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,” adds alderman JP Smith, mayoral committee member for safety and security.
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