Project Purpose

The purpose of the project is to further develop and refine the Centre Level Performance Rating System that has been developed during December 2008 and a Policy on Centre-level Excellence in order to put in place a system for measuring performance of all centres against predetermined indicators aligned to the White Paper, and through monitoring the implementation of the operations strategy in the Centres of Excellence provide guidance to the planning and resourcing processes of the Department, which will then form the basis for the migration from a predetermined list of 36 Centres of Excellence to a model of centre excellence based on the level of performance over a Financial Year. The scope of the project has been to focus on the 36 Centres, but the scope over 2009/10 and 2010/11 will be to embed the concept and model of centre level excellence in the policy, procedures and systems of the Department.

The Centre-level Performance Rating System Work Stream will focus on the development of an interim tool to enable Centres to be rated according to the outcomes of the populated indicators. Performance rating levels will have to be agreed on for centres to qualify to remain CoE’s. The outcomes of the Centre Level Performance Rating System will identify those CoE that can be regarded as model Correctional Centres and enable an annual identification of such centres.

The Policy Work stream will ensure a process is embarked on to draft a CoE policy for the DCS. The policy will be based on the functioning of this model. This will be followed by the development of procedures.

The Delivery Work Stream of the Project will focus on the delivery on the Operations Strategy targets. Key elements of a well functioning CoE are: Unit Management in place
Correctional Sentence Plans in place
Case Management processes in place
Adequate HR provisioning Care and corrections programmes
Structured Day programmes
3 meal system
Assessment of offenders
Reintegration processes