Journalists exercise their democratic role in society by holding those in power to account. People have the right to know why and how their government spends tax money on the for-profit incarceration of citizens.

“Compellingly written and painstakingly researched over nearly ten years, this engrossing narrative details Ruth Hopkins’s attempts to expose and bring to account abuses in the G4S-run prison near Bloemfontein. It challenges each of us to think better, more deeply, and more practically, about what is done, in our name, in our country’s prisons.” Edwin Cameron, Former Constitutional Court Justice

The Misery Merchants is a hard-hitting exposé of G4S, the company running a private prison in Mangaung, South Africa. Hopkins presents up-close encounters with prison gangs members who run the prison, frank and revealing interviews with prisoners, and a unique insight into the minds of the warders on the torture squad.