Inmates’ Experiences of Rehabilitation and Self‐Perception: A Sense of Coherence Exploration From Leeuwkop Correctional Centre

ABSTRACT

Background

Rehabilitation is a central objective of correctional services in South Africa, intended to support behavioural change, reduce recidivism and contribute to successful reintegration. Despite this mandate, concerns regarding persistent recidivism and prison overcrowding remain. Less is known about how incarcerated individuals themselves experience rehabilitation and make sense of it.

Aim

To explore how incarcerated individuals describe and make sense of their experiences of rehabilitation within a South African correctional setting.

Methods

Forty repeat-offending men serving custodial sentences at Leeuwkop Correctional Centre, South Africa, and having taken part in some rehabilitation programmes there, agreed to participate in semi-structured interviews about their experiences of the rehabilitation work. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Findings were partially validated through interviews with eight professional staff members who had been delivering aspects of the rehabilitation work. Themes were subsequently interpreted using the Sense of Coherence framework.

Results

Prisoner participants described shifts in self-perception, including increased self-awareness, a greater sense of personal responsibility and more future-oriented perspectives. These experiences broadly fit with the Sense of Coherence components of comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. Such shifts were not, however, uniform and were often described as tentative and shaped by contextual constraints.

Conclusion

Rehabilitation was experienced not only as a behavioural intervention but also as a process of meaning-making and identity reconstruction. By applying the Sense of Coherence framework as a postanalytic interpretive lens, this study offers a novel way of understanding how incarcerated individuals experience rehabilitation and perhaps internalise key aspects of it. Further longitudinal research is needed to examine the sustainability of these perceived changes over time.