Pollsmoor Prison

Pollsmoor Prison, officially known as Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, is located in the Cape Town suburb of Tokai in South Africa. Pollsmoor is a maximum security penal facility that continues to hold some of South Africa's most dangerous criminals. Although the prison was designed with a maximum capacity of 4,336 offenders attended by a staff of 1,278, the current inmate population is over 7,000 (a figure which fluctuates daily).

Since it was established in 1964, the prison has been systematically expanded, so that Pollsmoor today comprises five prisons:

The prison also hosts a number of facilities to assist in the training of prisoners so as to reduce recidivism upon release such as a restaurant that is open to the public.

The Pollsmoor Admission Centre (formerly the Maximum Prison) is the largest of the five prisons making up the Pollsmoor Management Area. The vast majority of its approximately 3,200 inmates (almost half the total inmate population of Pollsmoor) are unsentenced awaiting-trial prisoners, or sentenced prisoners facing further charges. As an awaiting-trial prison (or remand centre) its population is constantly changing. On a daily basis, about 300 prisoners are booked out to appear in various courts around Cape Town. Some return as sentenced prisoners, others do not return at all, but large numbers come back to their cells to await a future court date, sometimes as distant as six months later.

The Pollsmoor Admission Centre receives prisoners sent to it by the courts. It is massively overcrowded, holding more than twice as many prisoners as it was designed for. By far the majority of prisoners live in communal bungalow cells, in which up to 40 prisoners sleep on double and triple bunks. Even the tiny single cells (of 2.5 by 2 metres) are occupied by one or three prisoners.

Gangsterism is a potent feature of Pollsmoor Prison life, and gangs are segregated into three separate sections on a single floor, accommodating a total of between 500 and 750. This segregation is in part an attempt to limit the gangs' ongoing recruitment of new members from amongst the recent arrivals. Because wardens are present in the sections for less than two-thirds of the day, the gangs are enormously powerful in the communal cells. Gang rule involves extreme violence, including sexual violence.

The prison's gangs, the 26s, 27s, and 28s, are collectively referred to as "The Numbers". The groups are loosely affiliated with one another, each having its own hierarchy, leadership, and function within the whole. The 26s secure money via gambling and smuggling. The 27s serve as gang enforcers. The 28s are the soldiers for all three groups, and deal with procuring and keeping sexual partners or "wyfies".

Few members achieve the means to leave these gangs after leaving prison. They tattoo their ranks on their bodies or faces, so that even outside prison their status is clear. Some members are so tied into the gang culture that life outside is unthinkable, and they would rather confess to a crime they didn't commit than be free men walking the streets.^{[citation needed]}