South African Prison Research Articles

A Scoping Review of Dominant Masculinities within South African Prisons

A Scoping Review of Dominant Masculinities within South African Prisons

Can gangs be a source of ubuntu in prison?

This paper considers the African communal ethic of Ubuntu as it is understood in the South African context. Its background and context and the various interpretations of this lived ethic in society and academia will be explored. According to Ubuntu, what is good is constituted by how one relates to others (affirming others, empathising, etc.). It is not an ethic that is purely governed by laws and the outcomes of actions. This paper considers the detrimental effect of gangsterism on prisoners’ personal and social development in South African prisons and illustrates how the solidarity and identity of prisoners is merely an illusion that misguidedly resembles communal harmony or Ubuntu. Specifically, after pointing out how indigenous values in South Africa tend to prescribe honouring harmonious relationships, this paper will reveal how this approach to morality affects the way one understands prison conditions, prison relations and criminal justice. It advances that the values of Ubuntu have the potential to aid in prisoner rehabilitation and help prisoners stand against gang life in prison. This paper will suggest that the harmony found in Ubuntu has implications different from gang conformity. Lacking the space to systematically defend harmony as a fundamental value, it nonetheless urges theorists not to disregard it when considering prison transformation in South Africa. The intention of this study is not to demonstrate that Ubuntu is superior to the more popular Western moral theories in South Africa, but rather to tease out the implications of one plausible interpretation of Ubuntu and apply it to prison communities in South Africa.

Narratives of Rehabilitation in a South African Prison

Abstract How individuals incarcerated in the Global South engage with the official rehabilitative model remains largely under-documented. Through analysis of the narratives of men and women living in a large, medium-security correctional complex in Gauteng, South Africa, I argue that the grandiloquent official discourse of rehabilitation constitutes an important resource for those incarcerated. Highlighting the importance of local context in debates about carceral rehabilitation, I demonstrate that not only prisoners’ personal circumstances, but also the wider socio-economic context of enduring colonial legacies of structural inequalities shape their interactions with the penal regime. By foregrounding what those subjected to penal power make of their incarceration, I argue that the official rehabilitative discourse helps many to make sense of their predicament, actualise their lives, and sustain hope. I highlight how individual narrative strategies are channeled by and mapped on the official discourse of rehabilitation, free will, and personal responsibility, attesting to the success of the disciplinary project of the post-apartheid prison. I demonstrate how prisoners incorporate engagement with the rehabilitative model into a moral order of carceral cohabitation. I suggest that narrative work in the prison constitutes a nexus of individual needs and private aspirations and structural regimes of inequality, poverty, deprivation, and neglect.

Bosman’s Cold Stone Jug and the Genesis of the South African Prison Memoir

This article considers Herman Charles Bosman’s memoir, Cold Stone Jug, as an early and influential prototype for the important genre of South African prison literature in the twentieth century. The memoir is attentive to the ways in which the material space of the Benthamite prison dictates social relationships and rituals, and becomes psychologically internalized. The article performs a close analysis of Bosman’s Cold Stone Jug in order to show how the distinctive chronotopes of the prison find expression in narrative form.

Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost or Tshotsholoza, Dugmore Boetie, edited by Vusumuzi R. Kumalo and Benjamin N. Lawrance

Reviewed by: Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost or Tshotsholoza by Dugmore Boetie Riti Sharma BOOK REVIEW of Boetie, Dugmore. 2020. Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost or Tshotsholoza. Edited by Vusumuzi R. Kumalo and Benjamin N. Lawrance. With an introduction by Benjamin N. Lawrance and Vusumuzi R. Kumalo, foreword by Nadine Gordimer, and afterword by Barney Simon. Athens: Ohio University Press. 187 pp. $24.95 (paper). In this novel, the word tshotsholoza, meaning "go forward," is the title of a South African song, sung by prisoners. Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost is like a requiem for this song, as the protagonist is usually found amid acts that will help him go to a place he calls home. The heart of the text lies in the concept of home—its location and its history. Dugmore Boetie is a conman who serves time in South African prisons. Half his narrative is like a prison diary; the rest is paced like a thriller, incorporating elements of the satirical and the sentimental. It is in the style of a bildungsroman, which tells the tale of a boy in a world busy segregating human beings. The trials and twists in his life hinge on the fact that he has survived many years of racial prejudice and cultural hatred, but his job description makes life worse for him. Learning to be a conman when one is a Black South African in apartheid South Africa means flirting with death. Not just the crime, but being a criminal means having to carry this identity for the rest of one's life. But for Boetie, battling the so-called pass laws is a rite of passage. His nerves, brain, and just plain bad luck get him into and out of complicated predicaments. He comes to the reader as a runaway child who has dabbled in petty crimes. As an adult, he wants to escape the state-mandated social services, but he goes back to them when he needs work, unemployable on account of being physically disabled. "If you were black, you'd see life. If you were white, life would see you" (14). It would be betraying Boetie to say his story is summed up in these words, but they are evidence of his perspective on life. Whether he joins a gang, serves a prison sentence, sells marijuana, becomes a musician, or tries to be an honest husband, his skin color both makes him face extenuating circumstances and permits him to create a new sense of identity. The law in [End Page 141] South Africa works differently for Blacks and Coloreds, and Boetie is a man who understands its nuances. All the importance of identity comes to the final point: how does a person survive? His stories may seem like an act of lying, but autobiographies are not always whole truths. Boetie's contribution to the landscape of South African literature is through his method of telling, a testament to the oral tradition. Only a phenomenal storyteller can come up with phrases like "ox-cart-wide alleys." That is how people remember Boetie—as a musician and a storyteller. Boetie's friendship with other conmen opens a world of possibilities in understanding how crime and society function as partners. Without the one, the other is impossible. Boetie's life as a musician coincides with the time he starts living away from crime, but even in today's world, being a musician is hard. He uses phrases like "three quaver knocks" (25); in the afterword, Barney Simon admits to having met people at the hospital where Boetie was, who recognized him as the one who sang and regaled them with stories. One comes back to the song Tshotsholoza, which Boetie heard being sung by other inmates in prison. Boetie likens the song to an orphaned child, as nobody knows its origins. His book tells the tale of a similar boy—who could not claim an identity and whom nobody would come to claim as their own. When Boetie talks about joining the army, one comes face-to-face with the irony of being a Black person in South Africa. When things like cracking a joke...

Retiring in a Prison Cell: The South African Sentenced Older Adult Male Offender

The purpose of this study was to create a profile of the sentenced older adult male offender incarcerated in South African prisons. The findings of this investigation are based on face-to-face surveys with 88 older adult male inmates. In order to develop a comprehensive profile, the study explored offenders’ backgrounds, previous and current offenses, lifestyle patterns, physical and mental health, institutional living conditions, release, reintegration, and mortality in prison. These domains are discussed in detail, and recommendations are offered for the treatment and care of this offender group. The recommendations may be applicable to other developing countries in the Global South.

Religion and Rehabilitation in Colombian and South African Prisons: A Human Flourishing Approach

This paper examines whether and how religion contributes to prisoner rehabilitation—conceptualized as a prosocial change in self-identity, existential belief, and character based on identity theories of criminal desistance, the “Good Lives Model” of offender rehabilitation, and the concept of human flourishing. For this study, we conducted a quasi-experimental study assessing a faith-based program, “The Prisoner's Journey” (TPJ). We hypothesized that participation in TPJ increased religiosity, which in turn contributed to rehabilitation, measured by identity transformation, a new sense of meaning and purpose in life, and virtue development. It was also hypothesized that prisoner rehabilitation enhanced emotional well-being and reduced the risk of interpersonal aggression. To test our hypotheses, we applied structural equation modeling to analyze data from 506 prisoners in Colombia and South Africa, who participated in pretest and posttest surveys. As hypothesized, we found that completion of TPJ increased religiosity, which in turn fostered motivation for identity change, the perception of meaning and purpose in life, and the virtues of forgiveness, accountability, and self-control. In addition, the increased perception of meaning and purpose in life and two virtues (forgiveness and self-control) decreased negative emotions and the risk of interpersonal aggression. The implications and limitations of our study are discussed.

Navigating the complexities of (trans) gender equality rights within the parameters of reasonable accommodation and security tensions in South African prisons: The judgement of September v Subramoney

Within the heterogenous global prison population of about 11.7 million, transgender prisoners have unique vulnerabilities and are exposed to substantial risks and harm. Their situation has been viewed as a ‘‘double punishment’’ by encompassing the system lack of gender recognition and exposure to traumatic experiences of detention often tantamount to torture. In Africa, sexual minority rights remain a contentious issue, and there is little documented about the situation of incarcerated transgender people.South Africa is one of the most progressive African countries in terms of equality legislation and advancing the rights of sexual and gender minorities. A legal realist review was conducted of the 2019 South African Equality Court judgement of September v Subramoney, based on case decisions and by scrutinizing the international and regional human rights protections and rights assurance mechanisms which encompass the fundamental rights of detained transgender individuals. These are not limited to protection from custodial violence, prohibition of torture and discrimination but include conditions of accommodation, right to express their gender identity and access to gender affirming healthcare. The subsequent legal realist account critiques the impact of this judgement based on extant published literature (empirical, humanitarian, and UN Committee reporting) and jurisprudence in other jurisdictions cognisant of increasing strategic litigation in the field of transgender rights. The implications of this ground-breaking judgement are considered, with a particular lens focusing on the rights of trans-prisoners (particularly trans-women as most vulnerable) to equality, but also dignity, freedom of expression, dignified detention, and the prohibition of inhumane treatment or punishment. These rights are positioned within the boundaries of safe and reasonable accommodation, ability to gender express and prison system capacity to deal with security tensions in high risk cis-normative detention environments.

Religion and Responsibility-Taking Among Offenders in Colombia and South Africa: A Qualitative Assessment of a Faith-Based Program in Prison.

This paper examines whether religion contributes to offenders taking responsibility for crimes. Specifically, we assessed whether participation in The Prisoner's Journey (TPJ), a bible study program, increased or decreased responsibility-taking. We also examined whether religious offenders that did not participate in TPJ were likely to take responsibility for their offenses. For this study, we conducted a quasi-experiment in two Colombian and five South African prisons from 2018 to 2019, collecting data from personal interviews with a total of 73 inmates-42 TPJ participants and 31 non-participants-before and after the program. Offenders frequently offered subtle accounts of responsibility that incorporated their own agency with other factors. Highly religious offenders were equally likely to take responsibility, and in some cases participation in TPJ heightened responsibility. In sum, this paper presents evidence that religious beliefs and practice are commensurate with responsibility-taking and desistance from crime.

A Study of Political Struggle In Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer’s 1979 novel, Burger’s Daughter, makes a valuable contribution to the corpus of prison writing by responding to the socio-historical specificities of the South African prison during the apartheid regime. Drawing on Barbara Harlow’s work on women and political detention, and with reference to Ruth First’s memoir, 117 Days: An Account of confinement and interrogations under the South African ninety-day detention law (1965), this article offers an analysis of the potential for writing—both as fiction and memoir—to reinstate to the official historical record women’s roles in the anti-apartheid movement and their subsequent political detention. It explores how the apartheid regime intended prison not for rehabilitation but as a space of deactivation and invisibility. Prison is, however, a world apart, a liminal space which is simultaneously conducive to political struggle and deactivation, violence and communitas. This article begins by exploring how apartheid prison was both a space of deactivation and of resistance for women activists. It then moves to examine how both these contradictory aspects are registered, briefly, in Ruth First’s memoir, 117 Days and, to a larger extent, in Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter. First’s memoir depicts the prison as a space that imposes inertia while also allowing for moments of solidarity between incarcerated activists. Similarly, in Gordimer’s novel, the journey of Rosa, the eponymous Burger’s daughter, takes her from outside of the prison to inside it, and from feeling alienated to feeling belonging as she endures transformation that is spatial and spiritual, personal and political.

"Ubuntu" I am because we are: COVID-19 and the legal framework for addressing communicable disease in the South African prison system.

The purpose of the paper was to conduct a legal-realist assessment of the South African prison system response to COVID-19. Severely congested and ill-resourced prison systems in Africa face unprecedented challenges amplified by COVID-19. South Africa has recorded the highest COVID-19 positivity rate in Africa and, on March 15th 2020, declared a national state of disaster. The first prison system case was notified on April 6th 2020. A legal-realist assessment of the South African prison system response to COVID-19 in the 12 months following initial case notification focused on the minimum State obligations to comply with human rights norms, and the extent to which human, health and occupational health rights of prisoners and staff were upheld during disaster measures. A legal-realist account was developed, which revealed the indeterminate nature of application of South African COVID-19 government directives, ill-resourced COVID-19 mitigation measures, alarming occupational health and prison conditions and inadequate standards of health care in prisons when evaluated against the rule of law during State declaration of disaster. This legal-realist assessment is original by virtue of its unique evaluation of the South African prison system approach to tackling COVID-19. It acknowledged State efforts, policymaking processes and outcomes and how these operated within the prison system itself. By moving beyond the deleterious impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the already precarious South African prison system, the authors argue for rights assurance for those who live and work in its prisons, improved infrastructure and greater substantive equality of all deprived of their liberty in South Africa.

The Strategic Benefits Of Rehabilitation Of The Prison Population Of The City Of Tshwane

There are 158, 111 prisoners in South Africa. This figure includes pre-trial detainees or remand prisoners. Foreign prisoners account for about 7.5% of the South African prison population. There are 243 prison facilities in South Africa. The official capacity of South African prisons is 119, 134. There is a severe shortage of prison facilities in South Africa. Several studies have shown the need for rehabilitation programmes based on international best practice. A survey was conducted by collecting data from 408 residents of the City of Tshwane in South Africa in order to identify factors that affect the perception of people living in the City about the rehabilitation of prison inmates back into society. Multivariate methods of data analyses were used for data analyses. The results showed that 83.33% of respondents support the rehabilitation of South African prison inmates, whereas the remaining 16.67% do not support the rehabilitation of South African prison inmates. The results identified 3 influential factors. These 3 factors were the gender of respondents, the ages of respondents and the level of education of respondents.

South African and Northern Irish Political Prison Writing Reimagining/Reconfiguring the Carceral Space

Without overplaying the convergences in the discriminatory and oppressive practices carried out during the twentieth century by the states of South Africa (1948–1994) and Northern Ireland (1921–1998), it is difficult not to see prisons as one of the spaces where the power of the state was hotly contested. Physically isolated either by the countryside or by the ocean, the notorious prisons of Long Kesh/H Blocks and Robben Island housed vast numbers of political prisoners whose resolve and resistance the prison and state regimes attempted to break, deploying a variety of brutal strategies to do so. These violent infringements on prisoners’ human rights also occurred in prisons situated in more central areas, but regardless of the physical situation of the prison, its inhabitants were (and of course still are today) rendered invisible and inaudible. This essay will focus on prose and poetry produced by political prisoners during incarceration and, in some cases, after their release. I would like to explore how the various aesthetics developed by both well-known and anonymous writers participate in a very political reconfiguration of both the carceral space and the wider biopolitics of the state. I suggest it is in the very stylistics of the texts that their implicit political message can be deciphered, and the prisoners’ agency asserted. Paradoxically, then, in spite of attempts to push the prisoners out of sight, their resistance becomes all the more visible and audible, and forces a redistribution of the sensible through dissensus.

The prevalence of mental disorders among offenders admitted at health facilities in Bizzah Makhate Correctional Service Centre, Kroonstand, South Africa

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of mental disorders among offenders admitted at the health establishments in Bizzah Makhathe Correctional Centre, South Africa. Structured psychiatric interviews were conducted to elicit the information. The majority of the participants were young male Africans with low educational levels and poor socio-economic status. Crimes against human beings were the most common ones committed by the offenders. The lifetime prevalence of mental disorders was 54.7%. Personality disorders, followed by substance and addictive disorders, were the most prominent disorders among the study sample. Other psychiatric disorders noted were depressive disorders, schizophrenia, intellectual disabilities and neurocognitive disorders. The results show that mental disorders in prisons go undetected and untreated, meaning that competency to stand trial and criminal responsibility are not always observed. There is a need to conduct more empirical studies on the prevalence and incidences of mental disorders in South African prisons.

Symptom and digital chest X-ray TB screening in South African prisons: yield and cost-effectiveness.

BACKGROUND: Correctional inmates are at a high risk of tuberculosis (TB). The optimal approach to screening this population is unclear.METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed records from TB screening in 64 correctional facilities in South Africa between January 2015 and July 2016. Inmates received symptom screening (any of cough, fever, weight loss, or night sweats) combined with digital chest X-ray (CXR), when available. CXRs were assessed as 'abnormal' or with no abnormalities. Inmates with either a symptom or an 'abnormal' CXR were asked to provide a single spot sputum for Xpert® MTB/RIF testing. We estimated the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) per additional TB case detected using CXR screening among asymptomatic inmates.RESULTS: Of 61 580 inmates, CXR screening was available for 41 852. Of these, 19 711 (47.1%) had TB symptoms. Among 22 141 inmates without symptoms, 1939/19 783 (9.8%) had an abnormal CXR, and 8 (1.2%) were Xpert-positive among those with Xpert tests done. Of 14 942 who received symptom screening only and had symptoms, 84% (12 616) had an Xpert result, and 105 (0.8%) were positive. The ICER for CXR screening was US$22 278.CONCLUSION: Having CXR in addition to symptom screening increased yield but added considerable cost. A major limitation of screening was the low specificity of the symptom screen.

Ethics education in prison: a pilot study on an ethics programme for offenders

Education is a fundamental process of human life with ethics having an important place in all areas of our life. It is thus important to incorporate ethics into education as a subject (Gulcon Procedia-Social and Behavioural Science 174: 2622–2625, 2014). Reports have indicated in how “teaching philosophy can enhance people’s capacity for critical (rather than emotional) thinking, encourage critical engagements with ideas of self, and improve interpersonal skills, with these being important transferable skills that could help prisoners to prosper once released” (Reported by The University of Edinburg n.d.). This is in line with the South African prison system’s mandate, which is to maintain and promote a just, peaceful and safe society by correcting offending behaviour in a safe, secure and human environment, thus facilitating optimal rehabilitation and reduced repeat offending (Department of Correctional Services 2017). Therefore, for the system to fulfil some of its mandate; ethics education in prison for the purpose of rehabilitating offender’s moral thinking and reasoning in order to correct their behaviour before being released is vital. Ethics training was done at the Johannesburg Correctional Service, with a maximum of 40 voluntary participants (who self-selected themselves to take the training). Training was dived into three categories: 1. Tutorials. 2. Practical application of moral values of Ubuntu. 3. Discussion and debating another set of moral values as well as writing of assignments. Participants reported to have gained and learned to respect themselves as well as others (in their immediate community- prison and society at large), identify their faults (crimes they committed) and gained self-confidence. Application of this method in ethics education proved to be well received by the participants, as well as how ethics training in prison might be used as an effective tool for moral development and reasoning, thereby rehabilitation.

An occupational perspective on infants behind bars

ABSTRACTInfants up to two years of age residing with their incarcerated mothers in South African prisons experience a restrictive environment with limited resources and opportunities for learning, playing, and interacting, with potential impact on their development. As a result, special Mother Baby Units were introduced by the Department of Correctional Services in 2011. This study sought to describe the current Mother Baby Units as the context for occupational participation of infants, and to describe the mothers’ perceptions of the effect of this environment on the health, well-being, and normal development of their infants. Using a descriptive qualitative methodology, data were gathered in three different facilities. Observational checklists were used to assess the environments and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 mothers. Themes were identified using content analysis of data and revealed a situation of occupational injustice, with factors inherent to the correctional environments depriving infants of opportunities for optimal occupational participation. Despite identifying many hindering factors, mothers reported that these living arrangements provided them the opportunity to engage in vital mothering co-occupations. From an occupational perspective, we recommend revision of policies to provide infants with an environment more representative of the outside world, while affording them the opportunity to live with their mothers, albeit in prison.

On the record with Judge Jody Kollapen

With the revelations by Bosasa officials at the State Capture Enquiry, held in early 2019, laying bare the corrupt links between prisons, detention centres and border control, and high ranking political and government officials, the time is ripe to excavate the capitalist interests that fuel incarceration in this country. How did the prison industrial complex overtake the lofty principles that ushered in the South African democratic era? Judge Jody Kollapen is well-placed to speak to about the evolution of the South African prison from a colonial institute that served to criminalise and dominate 'natives', to its utility as instrument of state repression under apartheid, to its present manifestation in the democratic era. He has laboured at the coalface of apartheid crime and punishment through his work as an attorney in the Delmas Treason Trial, and for the Sharpeville Six, and also worked as a member of Lawyers for Human Rights, where he coordinated the 'Release Political Prisoners' programme, Importantly, Justice Kollapen had a ringside seat at the theatre of our transition from apartheid to democracy as he was part of the selection panel that chose the commissioners for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Many questions can be asked of the South African TRC including whether it was the best mechanism to deal with the past and whether it achieved reconciliation. What concerns us here is its impact on crime and punishment in the democratic era. If our transition was premised on restorative justice, then shouldn’t that be the guiding principle for the emerging democratic state? In line with this special edition’s focus on the impact of incarceration on the marginalized and vulnerable, Judge Kollapen shares some insights on how the prison has fared in democratic South Africa, and how imprisonment affects communities across the country. As an Acting Judge in the Constitutional Court, a practitioner with a long history of civic engagement, and someone who has thought and written about criminalization, human rights and prisons, Judge Kollapen helps us to think about what decolonization entails for prisons in South Africa.

On the record with Judge Jody Kollapen

With the revelations by Bosasa officials at the State Capture Enquiry, held in early 2019, laying bare the corrupt links between prisons, detention centres and border control, and high ranking political and government officials, the time is ripe to excavate the capitalist interests that fuel incarceration in this country. How did the prison industrial complex overtake the lofty principles that ushered in the South African democratic era? Judge Jody Kollapen is well-placed to speak to about the evolution of the South African prison from a colonial institute that served to criminalise and dominate 'natives', to its utility as instrument of state repression under apartheid, to its present manifestation in the democratic era. He has laboured at the coalface of apartheid crime and punishment through his work as an attorney in the Delmas Treason Trial, and for the Sharpeville Six, and also worked as a member of Lawyers for Human Rights, where he coordinated the 'Release Political Prisoners' programme, Importantly, Justice Kollapen had a ringside seat at the theatre of our transition from apartheid to democracy as he was part of the selection panel that chose the commissioners for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Many questions can be asked of the South African TRC including whether it was the best mechanism to deal with the past and whether it achieved reconciliation. What concerns us here is its impact on crime and punishment in the democratic era. If our transition was premised on restorative justice, then shouldn’t that be the guiding principle for the emerging democratic state? In line with this special edition’s focus on the impact of incarceration on the marginalized and vulnerable, Judge Kollapen shares some insights on how the prison has fared in democratic South Africa, and how imprisonment affects communities across the country. As an Acting Judge in the Constitutional Court, a practitioner with a long history of civic engagement, and someone who has thought and written about criminalization, human rights and prisons, Judge Kollapen helps us to think about what decolonization entails for prisons in South Africa.

Editorial: Decolonising the South African Prison

Editorial for December 2018 Special Edition on Decolonising Prisons.