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VIII. CONTACTS WITH THE OUTSIDE

As described earlier, South African prisons were for years surrounded by a veil of secrecy. The press was severely restricted in writing about prison matters, and in practice hardly ever covered prison stories for fear of costly lawsuits. Writing about prison experience even in a private letter was illegal.

The recent changes in the law have improved the situation with respect to the media and publishing. But conveying information about prison conditions in the course of a private conversation between an inmate and a visitor, for example, may still be considered a violation of prison rules. During our 1993 visit to the Brandvlei prison, we saw a sign in the visiting area that listed rules for visits. Item number 2 provided: "No discussions on prison administrations [sic] will be allowed."

VISITS

As described in the sections regarding the classification groups, contact with the outside depends to a large extent on the "privilege group" under which a particular inmate has been classified.⁹⁵

Only prisoners with the highest "privilege" classification, group A, are entitled to contact visits. Unsentenced prisoners do not have contact visits regardless of the charge or the length of their pre-trial detention, though the number of visits they may receive is unlimited. Sentenced or unsentenced prisoners held in police lockups may in practice receive a limited number of visits, whatever their theoretical entitlement. Police lockups have no facilities for visits (since they are not supposed to hold anybody for longer than forty-eight hours), and visits may be limited only to weekends, as was the case in Verwoerdburg, for example.

The frequency and duration of visits and the number of persons allowed to visit also depend on the classification. Group D can have up to twelve visits a year; group C twenty-four visits; group B thirty-six visits; and group A forty-eight visits. For all groups, the visits need to be evenly spaced in time. Only one person can visit a group D prisoner at a time; prisoners classified as C and B can be visited by up to two persons at a

time; and for group A the number of visitors is to be determined by the head of the prison. Children under the age of sixteen do not count as visitors, and their admission is subject to the suitability of the visiting facilities. A single visit for groups D through B can last up to thirty minutes; for group A the duration is up to forty minutes.

Non-contact visits are conducted in specially designed booths. A row of, say, twenty prisoners may sit on stools on one side of a glass or plastic screen, with partitions separating each prisoner from the next. Facing them, through the screen, is another stool (one only) for the visitor to sit at, again separated by a partition from the next visitor. The partitions are not sufficient to soundproof each booth from the next. An intercom system, operated by buttons pushed by the person speaking, allows communication between the two sides of the screen. A warder supervising the visits may listen to the conversations through the use of an extra receiver on the inmate's side of the partition. Where there is no intercom, as for example in Pretoria, inmates are supervised by guards who walk up and down the room.

Contact visits are conducted in general visiting areas, under guards' supervision. Those we saw varied from gloomy hallways to relatively pleasant outdoor courtyards. In at least one case, we heard a complaint from an ex-prisoner who had group A classification that when no guard was available to supervise, he would get visits through the glass partition, even though he was entitled to contact visits. In Modderbee prison we received reports that relatives had to bribe staff members in order to be able to visit prisoners.

Contacts between inmates and their relatives are severely limited by the fact that many prisoners are held in institutions far away from their area of residence. It puts a heavy burden on relatives to undertake a lengthy trip to a distant area in order to be able to see an inmate for just thirty minutes. Even when prisoners are held in institutions near their home town, getting to the prison is not always easy. The Pollsmoor prisons, although only a few miles out of town, are accessible only by car and thus difficult to reach for most visitors. Robben Island, meanwhile, can be reached only by boat. Visitors must make arrangements with the Department of Correctional Services several days in advance to be able to get to the prison. The rules allow the head of a prison to permit several visits to be combined into one of longer duration, or to have several visits within just a few days; and at the time of our visit to the Westville complex in Durban, prisoners were allowed to combine two thirty-minute visits into one. However, this relaxation of the rules is at the discretion of each prison head, and is not the case at all prisons.

CORRESPONDENCE

According to prison officials, for two years now, prisoners have been able to send and receive an unlimited number of letters. Prison officials may check the letters in either direction.

But at Brandvlei, for example, we were told by inmates that letters had to be authorized by the head of the prison and that there were some problems with mail delivery. We heard similar complaints from prisoners at Barberton, who alleged that the officers mailed the letters out selectively. At Barberton in particular, but also in other prisons, inmates also complained that they had difficulty contacting lawyers or prisoners' aid organizations.

USE OF THE TELEPHONE

For a few years now, prisoners in South Africa have been allowed to make a limited number of telephone calls. Prisoners may make a phone call instead of a visit, and only on weekends and public holidays. Group D prisoners may not make any phone calls; group A prisoners are allowed to make an extra twelve phone calls per year, in addition to those they might want to substitute for visits. Each phone call may last up to ten minutes. Phones are not available in all the prisons. For example, in the Durban Westville complex, the male prisons had them but the only female prison did not.

ACCESS TO NEWS

In the past, all access to news, especially for political prisoners, was strictly controlled. Currently, the degree to which an inmate can keep abreast with developments on the outside depends chiefly on his or her classification group and financial situation. Complete isolation from developments in the outside world is no longer inflicted on any prisoner. Inmates with D classification are not allowed access to news. The other groups, to which most prisoners belong, are allowed to purchase newspapers and magazines and the amounts spent do not count toward the overall limit on spending money. Inmates classified A can own a TV set in their cells. In some prisons, inmates in lower groups can collectively rent or purchase a TV, and many prisoners have radios.

Access to legal advice

The Correctional Services Act and Regulations provide that a prisoner may have access to legal advice in connection with criminal proceedings or a civil action, subject to the permission of the Commissioner and any conditions set by the Commissioner.⁹⁶ The right of access to legal counsel as part of the right of access to the courts was recognized in the leading case of Mandela v. Minister of Prisons.⁹⁷ Interviews must be conducted within sight, though not hearing, of a member of the prison staff. Sound recording equipment may not be used, and a prisoner may not hand any document to his or her lawyer without the permission of the authorities. Right to legal representation at a disciplinary hearing before an institutional committee is specifically excluded by the Act, although a lawyer may be retained if the hearing is before a magistrate.⁹⁸

The economic realities of South Africa mean that the vast majority of prisoners have no lawyer, and were convicted or are held in custody pending trial without ever having received legal assistance. Many prisoners do attempt to contact groups that provide free advice, such as Lawyers for Human Rights, the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (NICRO), or the Legal Resources Centre. These letters are generally smuggled out of the prison: several prisoners complained to us that letters to lawyers complaining about prison conditions were confiscated or censored; others requested that no reply should be sent, or the prisoner would be punished. South African prisons do not have law libraries enabling prisoners to consult texts on their rights.

Groups dealing with prisoners' rights who wish to take action on the basis of letters that they receive are hampered by lack of resources to handle the number of requests for assistance. The physical remoteness of many of the prisons from large population centers means that it is a major investment of time and money to visit a single prisoner in one of these prisons. Lawyers are additionally restricted by the fact that only qualified attorneys are automatically allowed to consult with prisoners to give legal advice; paralegals or trainee attorneys do not generally have visiting rights. Although groups such as Lawyers for Human Rights have made special arrangements with the Department of Correctional Services for their paralegals to be able to visit prisoners, removal of this restriction would allow more prisoners to get legal assistance. In addition, a lawyer may not request to see a prisoner on the basis of information received through unofficial channels, nor discuss the prisoner's legal concerns in general, but must have an official request from that prisoner or a member of his or her family in order to obtain permission to visit from the authorities. In theory, a prisoner may only discuss ongoing or proposed litigation during a lawyer's visit, and may not discuss his or her general legal rights under prison law. In practice, however, this last provision no longer appears to be applied.

Judges and magistrates have the right to visit prisons at any time.⁹⁹ Although potentially a powerful tool to correct complaints at prison conditions, it appears that this power is irregularly used and of little effect in practice. The only mechanism explicitly provided in the regulations is for the judicial officer to report matters of concern to the Commissioner of Prisons.¹⁰⁰