Bearing Witness: Firsthand Accounts of Incarceration

After two years in solitary confinement, Ashleigh Chapman reflects on the real barriers to returning to education, and why prison and community education in Victoria need to be brought in line.

Son of Khoi reflects on his experience being incarcerated through a story of planting a green pepper tree in a pot, nurtured from seeds: “I am the plant in the pot.” This is Part 4 of a series called, “Bearing Witness: Firsthand Accounts of Incarceration.”

Opportunities for incarcerated persons to achieve education have increased, but often bettering ourselves makes us the enemy of correctional officers. The strange thing is that the resentment does not come from high-ranking officials, but from low-ranking ones instead. Here’s a first-hand account of life inside the walls of a correctional centre.

Release from prison is not the end of the story; it is the beginning of another struggle. A first-hand account of post-carceral life.

A personal account of being in solitary confinement in a Correctional Centre in South Africa – 42 days in an infamous section of the prison where several people in prison have died since 2023.