As the Pollsmoor marimba band rocked the marquee at Cape Town's Goodwood prison and Minister of Correctional Services Sbu Ndebele extolled the rehabilitative powers of poetry and painting, my husband was lying face-down on his office-floor in Johannesburg. He was focusing on the feet of the well-armed, well-dressed, well-spoken young men pointing four guns at his head while threatening to kill him if he didn't disclose the location of our safe, jewellery or cash - none of which we have in our home.

"We're serious, sissie, we're here to work....," they told our helper while corralling her and three terrified members of our gardening service into the house at gun-point before disembowelling every drawer and cupboard and ransacking the house.

Meantime, the avuncular, bespectacled Minister was telling the mostly brown-uniformed crowd about the need to impact "the heart, heads and hands of offenders so that on release they'd have a certificate in one hand and a skill in the other.

"Through poetry, art, culture, music, education, training and skills development, we seek to transform offenders into people who'll emerge from our correctional centres to make a meaningful and positive contribution to the development of society," he said. "....We'll use poetry, arts and culture not only as rehabilitation tools but as weapons to destroy crime, lawlessness and drug abuse..."

To this end, the Goodwood Gallery of Hope - an art gallery located within the prison walls but open to the public -was launched late last month. The gallery aims to showcase offender art, help inmates sell their work, support their families, raise money for their release and also serve as an after-care centre to ease re-integration.

The publication of Unchained, an anthology of prisoners' poetry launched on the same day, constitutes the second prong of a cultural revolution Ndebele envisages for the 243 correctional centres he oversees country-wide: "Creative writing is a rehabilitation tool which if pursued intensely can contribute to the reduction of recidivism."

After attending the Goodwood celebrations, I returned to Jozi to find a trashed home and a traumatised husband and helper. Struggling to make sense of the armed robbery that had taken place earlier that day, I quickly figured that the devastation the armed robbers left behind was ways more significant than anything they took away. And, clearly, our circumstances were not unique.

With SA's unacceptably high crime rates and the highest prison population on the continent, it's hardly surprising that Ndebele is a man with a mission. Nor that the former librarian Minister's other brainchild is the "Reading for Redemption" programme he launched last September. "Reading is one of the best ways to build character," Ndebele said at the time.

"Books will be used to instil a culture of reading and learning in offenders. We want to encourage inmates to read, read, read and study, study, study. The emphasis of Correctional Services is on corrections and all of us can be corrected. We must create an environment in our facilities that contributes to offenders becoming better than what they were, thereby ensuring a better SA."

Yet while Ndebele was addressing the assembled gathering, I couldn't help thinking that the real problem facing DCS related to chronic prison overcrowding, particularly in remand facilities - a "crisis" he acknowledged in his budget speech two days later.

According to Ndebele, of a total prison population of 152 514, only 107 471 have been sentenced and doing time. This means that a third of all correctional centre inmates are theoretically innocent because they have not yet been proven guilty and therefore do not "qualify" for rehabilitation. What's more, remand detainees are routinely incarcerated for up to 23 hours a day with no access to reading or educational materials.

In these chronically overcrowded cells which are breeding grounds for crime, petty thieves share beds with rapists and murderers. With some inmates forced to wait up to six or seven years for the conclusion of their trials, even if they're eventually acquitted there's a high probability they'll be hardened criminals by the time of their release.

Given these seemingly insurmountable problems and the recent rude collision of my private and professional worlds, I've been forced to re-evaluate my work. Spending my days investigating miscarriages of justice and defending the rights of offenders similar to those who've violated my family's rights poses a number of intractable questions.

Am I filled with hate and anger? Do I think the potential poets who changed the trajectory of my husband and helper's lives in a heartbeat should rot in hell? Do I have less respect for prisoners' rights? Or am I simply in denial as some friends have suggested? No, no and no.

Yes, I am overwhelmed by the reality of what happened and what could have happened. Yes, I have less trust in my judgements about people and some of the inmates I've defended over the past three years. And, predictably I'm much more fearful.

Yet I still believe prisoners' rights are indivisible from human rights and that some urgent out-of the box thinking is required to address the battery of problems emanating from the systemic breakdown of SA's criminal justice system.

Clogged court-rolls, corrupt officials, lost or missing transcripts, lack of adequately qualified court interpreters, faulty recording equipment, poor legal representation, an over-worked, underpaid, unskilled and increasingly brutal police force coupled with a growing culture of impunity and poor detective work are all pressing problems.

For example, though summoned for help the police finally arrived on our doorstep after my husband was forced to drive to Parkview police station more than two hours after his release from the toilet where he'd been locked before the home-invaders departed. The police, he was told, were too busy with another armed robbery and a hi-jacking in the area, to respond to his call for assistance.

As life returns to abnormal behind the oppressive closed doors of our own suburban prison, my scientific husband is obsessing about the probability of a repeat performance. "The dice has no memory," he says. "The real scary thing is not that it's happened, but that the chances of it happening again haven't lessened. Just because one gang has discovered we don't have a safe, jewelry or cash and have cleaned out everything else doesn't mean another won't arrive...."

As for me, I can only pray that one day poetry or painting will rehabilitate the four smooth-talking Barbarians who forced their way inside my gates. That's if they're ever caught, or sentenced. Meantime, I applaud Ndebele's noble vision and lofty sentiments: "It's better to light a candle," he told those gathered at the Gallery of Hope, "rather than to curse the darkness."

Carolyn Raphaely is a member of the Wits Justice Project which investigates miscarriages of justice relating to the criminal justice system. The project is located in the Department of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand.

This article first appeared in The Star.

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