Negligence, crumbling infrastructure blamed for escape of 284 prisoners

POLICE Deputy Minister Cassel Mathale has blamed crumbling infrastructure at police stations and negligence as the main factors leading to the escape of 284 prisoners in just eight months last year.  

There were 293 incidents in which 336 prisoners escaped in 2024/2025. This was a decline of 52 incidents from the year before. From April 1, 2025, to December 31, there were 205 incidents in which 284 prisoners escaped. 

The total escape incidents for the reporting period decreased by -9.29% during the same period from the year prior, but the number of escapees increased by 7.74%.

KwaZulu-Natal had the highest number of SAPS members charged with 68, followed by Free State (43), Gauteng (39), Eastern Cape (25), Western Cape (23), Limpopo (14), Mpumalanga (4), North West (4), and the Northern Cape (4).

This emerged on Wednesday when the Select Committee on Security and Justice was briefed by the SAPS on escapees from police custody.

Prisoners escaped most often from police station cells, courts at docks, rooms or passages, and through wrongful release at courts and police stations.

“On the issues of infrastructure, which has to do with the upgrading of the police station that was spoken to - currently, we have come to the conclusion that if we continue the way we have been continuing, we will not resolve this problem. We will come back here next year, talk about the same problem, and come the year after, talk about the same problem,” said Mathale. 

“Because this has been the norm in the past administration of complaints about (Department of) Public Works and its ability to respond. Our attitude is that we must think outside the box, and look at various options, and the government is currently leaning towards that direction of engaging the private sector.

“To assist us in dealing with the challenges that were confronted with around police stations, around rehabilitation, not only of police stations, but also living quarters of police officers that need to be maintained and upgraded,” Mathale said.

Divisional Commissioner for Visible Policing and Operations, Lt-Gen MJ Mamotheti said the SAPS has  allocated a budget for the police stations to be able to deal with small maintenance. 

However, police cells definitely needs the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure 

She said technology and negligence were also at fault, because while they do have the Integrated Case Docket Management System (ICDMS), there is still a reliance on manual procedure and process.

“When the case is registered on the system as escape, we are able to generate those cases from the ICDMs to indicate how many cases have been reported, but if you have to go and zoom in, in terms of identify what are the causes, whether there was corruption, whether there was negligence, then we rely on the reports that we get from provinces.”

Cape Times