BEHIND PRISON WALLS, unlocking a safer South Africa

295pp., colour illus., paperback, Tafelberg, Cape Town, 2025

ISBN: 9780624092698

Inspecting Judge of the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services in South Africa, Justice Edwin Cameron, and his colleagues, identify the failures in South Africa's carceral system, confront the country's oppressive past, and propose solutions for the future. 

South Africa has the largest prison population in Africa, one of the highest rates of femicide in the world, the vast majority of murderers are never prosecuted to conviction, and harsher corrective strategies have not resulted in lower crime rates or better prisons

"Unflinching. Practical proposals on how the system can be reformed." Dirk van Zyl Smit, Emeritus Professor of Criminology, UCT

"Challenges us to rethink our justice systems, not only in South Africa but worldwide." Sabrina Mahtani, founder of Women Beyond Walls

Edwin Cameron is a former Justice of South Africa's Constitutional Court. Before serving in the Constitutional Court, he was a Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal for eight years, and a Judge of the High Court for six. He is an honorary fellow of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies, London, and of Keble College, Oxford, as well as an honorary bencher of the Middle Temple, London. His other books include the autobiographies, Witness to Aids (Sunday Times Alan Paton Award) and Justice, a personal account, and Defiant Desire, gay and lesbian lives in South Africa (co-authored with Mark Gevisser).

Rebecca Gore is a Research Associate at the Centre for Law and Society. She was the legal researcher for the Inspecting Judge of the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services, Justice Cameron, and a law clerk at the Constitutional Court.

Sohela Surajpal  is a legal researcher at the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services.