Memories of the ‘inside’: Prison conditions in South African female correctional facilities

Abstract

The inadequate conditions of imprisonment in South African correctional facilities are well known. Health care, sanitation, food provision, access to education and reading materials, and in particular, the overcrowding, of female prisons are considerable challenges faced by the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) regarding the incarceration of female prisoners[i]. A retrospective view of the conditions under which female inmates in South African correctional facilities are incarcerated is examined in this paper. Findings indicate that prison conditions in some South African female correctional facilities are poor: health care and sanitation facilities are largely inadequate, the quality of food is poor, little or no reading materials are made available, and recreational facilities are largely absent. These conditions impact negatively on the female prisoners during, and sometimes, after their incarceration.

“It's Not Like Taking Chocolates”: Factors Influencing the Feasibility and Sustainability of Universal Test and Treat in Correctional Health Systems in Zambia and South Africa

“…However, mirroring the experience of UTT implementation in mainstream South African health services, 38 the study also revealed a number of issues regarding scalability and sustainability. Reflecting concerns in other recent literature on South Africa's correctional system, 39 , 40 our findings demonstrated an urgent need to boost human resource capacity and ARV stocks to manage the surge of testing and treatment initiation created by the backlog of treatment-eligible incarcerated people. The study also revealed how current national clinical guidelines that require a medical doctor to initiate ART are already contributing to treatment bottlenecks in correctional facilities where doctors are few, a situation likely to be exacerbated by UTT.…”

HIV prevalence and the cascade of care in five South African correctional facilities

“…While HCT uptake varies widely between demographic groups in sub-Saharan African countries, home-based HCT programs in South Africa and elsewhere in the region have attained uptake as high as 98% [ 20 , 21 , 22 ]. HIV-related stigma is a known barrier to HCT uptake in South Africa [ 23 , 24 ], but during this screening campaign over half of all eligible inmates opted to partake in HCT (57.4%). Both aggregate and stratified cascades demonstrated a loss in the proportion of qualified patients at most steps.…”

“…Staff shortages are one of the many challenges to providing routine testing in South African correctional facilities [ 23 , 24 ]. Frequently, inmates who failed to enter into HIV care after testing lacked access to adequate point of care CD4+ testing due to health care staff shortages.…”

Health professionals talk about the challenges of suicide prevention in two correctional centres in South Africa

“…In 2014, Pollsmoor prison in Cape Town was operating at 238% occupancy (Benatar, 2014). As a result of overcrowding in many SACCs, the majority of offenders spend up to 23 hr per day locked in a space smaller than a single mattress, offenders are sometimes forced to share beds, and there are insufficient bathroom facilities, inadequate supplies of toilet paper and soap, poor ventilation, and inadequately prepared and inedible food (Agboola, 2016; Benatar, 2014). Living under such conditions is inhumane and has an adverse impact on physical and mental health.…”