Prison for Profit (2019)

Directed by: Ilse van Velzen, Femke van Velzen | 83 minutes | documentary

Twin sisters Ilse and Femke van Velzen have delivered a thought-provoking documentary with ‘Prison for Profit’. We see Ruth Hopkins, an independent investigative journalist, who is working to get to the bottom of the matter of the private prison Mangaung in Bloemfontein (Africa). This prison, like so many other prisons around the world (Ireland, England, Australia), is privately secured by guards from G4S, the largest security firm in the world.

Ruth often receives letters from inmates, most of which she received from inmates at Mangaung Prison. Reason to investigate this further. Through conversations with guards and ex-prisoners, she makes shocking discoveries. In prison, the law of the strongest prevails, almost every day there is a (stabbing) incident to report. Mangaun has a total of 2,928 detainees. The ratio of guards to prisoners is 1:60. Many of the inmates belong to ‘gangs’, different gangs that also kill each other in prison.

Shakes, a former warden with 16 years of service, says that almost everything available in the prison is used as a weapon, for example a sharp piece from a smashed ceramic toilet. Because, he wonders: Why are only some of the toilet bowls made of metal, why not all of them so as not to take any risk? That turns out to be a money issue. The custodians are severely underpaid and at great risk every day. Danger money is not paid. It’s adapt or die, orders must be followed. There is no real protocol, people always intervene hard at will.

At the opening of the Mangaung prison it was widely reported that this would be a ‘fancy’ institution, with many (study) programs, its own dentist, a shoe shop (?) and a bakery. None of this in practice. In 2013, 331 guards went on strike and were replaced by unskilled workers. Because the latter has been banned by the African state, it intervened. After ten months, most of the dismissed custodians were reinstated. However, without any real improvements…

We see secretly filmed images of some incidents and how the security usually deals with the detainees. Detainees like Bekhi who was ‘crippled’ by the guards in the Mangaun. Torture, bad food and no medication. If they get hard, they’re injected with an anti-psychotic drug. This is the order of the day in the privately-run prison, which also costs the community three times as much as a regular state-run prison.

The articles that Ruth has already published about the prison are all denied by the CEO of G4S and there have been no reports from the ministry, despite the criticism and the many reports of mismanagement. Why? Probably because the contract with the ‘occupier’ G4S is an established fact. It is almost impossible to get out of this without extra sky-high costs. Profit by numbers, the inmate as a cash cow. The more prisoners, the more turnover. A shocking conclusion.