Many countries' prisons are closed-institutions with citizens unlikely to directly observe official misbehavior. To promote transparency and official accountability, prisons should be monitored by independent and impartial oversight mechanisms like prison inspectorates. But inspectorate staff confront numerous obstacles, one being their co-optation or “capture” by the same prison officials under observation. This study collected survey data from staff at the South African Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons (JIOP). The data indicated that the extent to which staff were captured was not explained by gender, age, education, length of JIOP employment, or whether staff thought the public should know about prison conditions. To varying degrees, capture's severity was explained by whether JIOP staff wanted to someday work as prison officials, whether or not they were lay prison visitors, and staff reports of powerless with and hostility from prison officials. The paper closes with recommendations for the JIOP and other oversight scholars.
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