Sandra M Hoffman

Sandy Hoffman practices as a counseling psychologist in Cape Town. Due to anti-apartheid activism she spent three months as an inmate in prison in 1986. During her internship as a psychologist, between 1996 and 1998 she worked with inmates who had been on death row in Durban-Westville correctional center. Between October 2000 and December 2003 she worked full-time as a psychologist in Pollsmoor correctional center in Cape Town. Her interest in prisons and punishment emerged from her context as...See more

Sandy Hoffman practices as a counseling psychologist in Cape Town. Due to anti-apartheid activism she spent three months as an inmate in prison in 1986. During her internship as a psychologist, between 1996 and 1998 she worked with inmates who had been on death row in Durban-Westville correctional center. Between October 2000 and December 2003 she worked full-time as a psychologist in Pollsmoor correctional center in Cape Town. Her interest in prisons and punishment emerged from her context as inmate, living with violence and learning from the narratives of those most shamed because of it. She resigned from this post when her request to conduct critical research into rehabilitation in the prison was denied, in order to complete her research. She was awarded a Doctorate in Psychology in 2007 from the University of Cape Town for her thesis entitled: Breaking the silence of violation in a South African prison, published in 2010 in Saarbrucken, by Lap Lambert Publishing. See less