The crime of being poor – images of human rights violations in prisons aim to spark rethink of incarceration

Photographer Michael Subotzky shows men in Madagascar and South Africa’s Pollsmoor and Voorberg prisons. (Photo: Zukiswa Pikoli)

By Zukiswa Pikoli

28 Oct 2022

‘Punishment is deprivation of liberty, it’s not the humiliation of overcrowding, abuse and other malpractices in prisons,’ Judge Edwin Cameron told attendees on the opening night of the powerful ‘The ties that bind us’ photographic exhibition.

Former Constitutional Court judge and current inspecting judge of the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS), Edwin Cameron, was one of the speakers at the prison conditions exhibition hosted by the South African Litigation Centre.

Cameron formally opened the exhibition and shared with the audience that during deliberations among the involved organisations before the exhibition, it was asked, “what about the victims of crimes?” to which he responded that he acknowledged the importance of the question with the greatest of humility and that it was a legitimate debate to be had, but that “punishment is deprivation of liberty, it’s not the humiliation of overcrowding, abuse and other malpractices in prisons”.

The JICS is a government organ whose mandate is to uphold and protect the rights of all inmates.

Retired Constitutional Court judge and current inspecting judge of the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services Edwin Cameron (Photo: Elizabeth Sejake / Rapport)

In the opening address, Deputy Justice Minister John Jeffery said: “In South Africa, as is the case all over the world, the law treats the rich very differently to the poor. The criminal justice system on the whole responds differently to the haves and the have-nots. The rich and the privileged have more access to better resources, they can afford legal representation, they can afford to pay bail, fines. The poor are much more likely to experience unlawful and excessive arrest, detention and disproportionate sentencing.”

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Jeffery explained that it all came down to a question of “who is more likely to experience an infringement on their human rights”, the rich or the poor, based on access to resources to enforce these rights, which led to a much-needed discussion about how the law is used and who benefits from it. In light of this, he asked the audience: “Are we all equal before the law?”

“We can often trace the criminalisation of certain offences by way of our history. Many offences which are criminalised today are the result of colonialism and or legislating for morality,” he said. This was quite often evident in municipal by-laws that often criminalised “life-sustaining activities in public spaces” and which discriminated against the marginalised in society.

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According to Jeffery it is therefore necessary to come up with a plan to rethink and review penal policies using legal instruments such as the Kampala Declaration and the Ouagadougou Declaration.

Referring to the photos in the exhibition, Justice Kenan Manda, the Malawian Prison Inspectorate chairperson, told the audience that “if you look around at the pictures here one thing you will see is that there are no affluent people in those pictures, which goes to the point that the deputy minister was saying that we have made poverty a crime.

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“We are now facing a situation where our prisons are overcrowded and sentencing someone to a prison term is in effect a death sentence in some countries. The question that we must ask ourselves is: aren’t these poor people that find themselves in our prisons victims of crime, and isn’t it about time that we start standing up for them?”

Images by Michael Subotzky of men in Madagascar and Pollsmoor and Voorberg prisons. (Photo: Zukiswa Pikoli)

The exhibition seeks to spotlight the often deplorable and inhumane living conditions of the one million prisoners across Africa, in an effort to rethink criminal law and incarceration on the continent. The photos have been supplied by photographer Michael Subotzky and civil society organisations Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders and the Campaign to Decriminalise Poverty and Status. DM/MC

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