Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
Ruth Hopkins

Creator

Ruth Hopkins

Mystery medication: In a video leaked to the Wits Justice Project, Mangaung prison inmate Bheki Dlamini, after being removed from his cell by warders, clearly indicates his dissent  before being held down and injected with a substance

‘Forced injections made us act like zombies’

Prison inmates say they were injected with an unidentified substance

Pain: Gershwin Coutts shows bruises sustained from beatings he claims were inflicted by guards at Mangaung prison in Bloemfontein in 2013.

Prison company stalls court actions

G4S has belatedly sought to prevent the release of medical records of inmates who say they were tortured

Silenced: Thabo Botsane’s arrest is part of a bigger story. Independent candidates in the Free State are charged and then labelled criminals by ANC councillors.

Free State ANC tramples on justice

Several cases involving party members point to the political silencing of their often poor opponents

Behind bars: Many women who have killed their violent partners end up with lengthy prison sentences.

Law fails women who kill partners in self-defence

Those who find their lives threatened in violent, abusive relationships have little recourse to justice

Government action on femicide goes wrong from the bottom up

Pairing the sky-high femicide figures with SA’s ignoble reputation as the rape capital of the world raises the question about government’s response.

Weed out arrests: Demonstrators in Cape Town march for the legalisation of dagga.

Police time and money go to pot

Arrests are costly and pointless, but decriminalising dagga will free up resources to tackle serious crime.

Rikers Island is a huge prison complex on an island in East River – located between Queens and the Bronx.

Shutting Rikers would be a major step towards fixing the US’s prisons

New York City’s jail has a long history of being a hotbed of inequality and abuse, which still lingers.

Melusi Motha denies ever being arrested, let alone spending time in prison. He claims that he is being targeted because of his political career. (David Harrison/M&G)

Filth, disease, sex and violence for Pollsmoor’s female inmates

Ruth Hopkins interviewed five women who are or were jailed in Pollsmoor Prison. They spoke of being traumatised by the appalling conditions.

Jermaine Prim, who allegedly ran an elaborate scam targeting luxury car owners from his cell, will return to court in later November

How Pollsmoor prison can kill you

The prison may have to clean up its act if an interdict launched by civil society that challenges the life-threatening conditions succeeds.

Leaked video footage reveals warders in Mangaung prison forcibly injecting a prisoner who had no history of mental illness with what is allegedly antipsychotic medication.

Tortured Mangaung prisoners seek justice

Lawyers for inmates held at the notorious Mangaung prison are suing the state – as well as the British firm that runs the prison – for abuses.

Detainees await tuberculosis testing at Pollsmoor

Pollsmoor prisoners treated ‘worse than animals’

Lice, grime, broken toilets and six-hour waits for visitors: life is tough in Cape Town’s Pollsmoor prison.

Professor Steve Tollman

Mangaung prison inmate ‘tortured to death’

Chilling new claims of inmate abuse at the embattled Mangaung prison in the Free State have emerged.

The warders in ‘Sun City’ are hugely outnumbered and often don’t possess the training to maintain order.

Fear, force and sex in Sun City

The inability of warders to handle increasing violence is turning the infamous Johannesburg prison into a sexual predator’s haven.

When warring Westbury gangs made peace in the 1990s

Westbury languishing under reign of its druglords

Amid a mix of unemployment and rampant drug addiction, and in alleged complicity with police, druglords have stepped into the gap left by the gangs.

Still no progress on Mangaung prison abuse claims

The wheels of justice are turning slowly in the case of a Free State jail accused of torturing its inmates.

Taking the Samas by storm: Khuli Chana

No escape for abused Mangaung prisoners

Everything is under control at the troubled prison, correctional services assured this week. But the inmates there tell a different, harrowing story.

Presumed innocent, rotting in jail

Despite legal reforms, prisoners are spending many years behind bars ­before going on trial.

Privatisation of prisons has ‘failed’

The Mangaung prison crisis has put the failure of private security before Parliament.

Electric shock therapy and torture are some of the allegations uncovered by the Wits Justice Project at the Mangaung Correctional Facility.

Mangaung prison is a private hell

Forced anti-psychotics and shock therapy are par for the course at the correctional facility.

Mangaung prison: Drugs, shock and torture by ‘ninjas’

Warders at the Mangaung Correctional Centre have allegedly meted out brutal and illegal punishments to Mangaung inmates.