Women Prisoners and South Africa

This article discusses the lives of women in prison in the new South Africa. It describes observations during site visits by the author to prisons in the Durban and Cape Town areas in the summer of 1995 and the spring of 1997. The article covers topics ranging from educational and employment opportunities to child care and maintenance of family ties, concluding that the ambitions of the country's new Constitution remain a far cry from the social and economic realities for the vast majority of its imprisoned women.