All roads led to the Estcourt Correctional Centre, as Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Michael Masutha officially opened the new prison on May 6.

Estcourt’s new prison includes an education and vocational training centre, building maintenance workshop, central kitchen and accommodation units for officials. Back in March 2012, the old corrugated iron structure was torn apart to accommodate the new state-of-the-art structure; designed for rehabilitation of medium-security sentenced male offenders. No offenders awaiting a sentence will be housed at the facility and neither will any female offenders.

The old facility had bed space for 203 offenders before being closed down. The new facility will now house 512 offenders and includes a special care unit. 309 additional bed spaces have been created, which will tackle overcrowding.

“This state-of-the-art centre will bring much-needed relief to the challenges of overcrowding currently faced by Correctional Services. This is one of our best centres,” said Mr Masutha.

After eight long years, the new and improved Correctional Centre has been officially launched.

The facility currently houses 50 transferred offenders, 20 cooks and 30 cleaners to test run the equipment. The second phase will have a further 150 offenders transferred from other management areas within the region and by the end of June, the prison will be fully occupied.

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