Prisoner transfer to South Africa: some of the likely challenges ahead

Abstract

Official and unofficial reports indicate that the South African government is in the process of entering into prisoner transfer agreements or making prisoner transfer arrangements. This comes after many years of reluctance on the part of the government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement or enter into any prisoner transfer arrangement. The reason for this change of position is not clear. In this article the author demonstrates what he considers to be the factors behind this change and discusses the issues that South Africa is likely to grapple with when the process of transferring offenders to South Africa commences.