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Cape Town - High among the "most pressing priorities" identified by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel in the National
Assembly when presenting his medium-term budget policy statement on Tuesday, was "investing in the criminal justice sector to reduce the levels of crime and to enable citizen safety".
He told MPs: "Key priorities here are to further expand police numbers and to invest in investigative capacity, forensic laboratories and an enhanced IT network infrastructure."
The increase in allocations to the safety and security department will enable an increase in the number of police officers to more than 200 000 by 2011. There were only 131 730 police officers in 1997/98.
The policy statement makes a point of firmly criticising the criminal justice system for its coordination failures, poor management and ineffective systems.
"In partnership with communities and business," the statement says, "government aims to restructure the criminal justice process and establish a more modern efficient and integrated system."
Funding priorities identified by the statement include the rollout of the integrated electronic docket management system - which will hopefully eliminate the plague of lost or missing dockets - a case management system, upgrading of network and associated infrastructure in all police stations, and national fingerprint identification.
Further increases in the number of policing personnel who specialise in crime prevention, detective work, crime intelligence and forensics will also receive priority.
The statement says that the capacity of prisons is being increased and there will be a greater focus on rehabilitating offenders before release. To this end six new prisons are expected to be completed over the next three years. Government will also focus on reducing the number of detainees awaiting trial.
On the country's borders, which have been castigated as lacking any kind of control, the statement says government is taking steps to strengthen security by increasing patrol capacity and upgrading technology to prevent organised cross-border crime.
- I-Net Bridge