Correctional services officers must focus on the rehabilitation of offenders so they can have a better life after their sentences, Correctional Services Minister Sbu Ndebele said on Wednesday.

"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future," he told officers at the Reformed Church in Pretoria.

Ideally the department should equip inmates with the skills to allow them to leave prison a changed person.

It was the department's aim to have correctional centres, instead of prisons. Officers had to create an environment within prisons that would allow offenders to become better people, he said.

Their last hope of rehabilitation was with correctional services, after having passed through the police and justice system.

Ndebele was appointed minister of the department on June 12, taking over from Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.