04/09/2026
This week, the 16th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion is taking place at the CTICC in Cape Town.
Yesterday, the Callas Foundation had the opportunity to participate in an important discussion hosted by the SA Bail Fund, focusing on prison conditions, accountability, independent oversight, and community responses.
The discussion also provided an important opportunity to reflect on women's pathways to prison. Women often enter correctional facilities through complex and gendered pathways, including experiences of poverty, gender-based violence, trauma, economic exclusion, and caregiving responsibilities.
Through our work with Women in Conflict with the Law, we have seen how these experiences often shape women's journeys into incarceration. Yet, the correctional system is often not sufficiently gender-responsive to the unique needs, experiences, and realities of women.
A gender-responsive approach to correctional services must recognise that women do not experience incarceration in the same way as men. Their histories of trauma, experiences of abuse and violence, caregiving responsibilities, and specific health and psychosocial needs require responses that uphold their dignity and human rights.
Meaningful change requires accountability, independent oversight, and stronger community-based responses. It also requires us to critically examine the conditions within correctional facilities and ask whether they are adequately responding to the specific realities and needs of women.
We are grateful to have been part of this important conversation and to continue learning, engaging, and advocating for more humane and gender-responsive correctional systems.
