The criminal you fear may be the boy next door

I recently spent a day in a crowded prison cell with 120 male prisoners, at Sun City prison, south of Johannesburg. The visit was part of my ongoing research into an issue that makes me afraid to be a woman in South Africa - sexual violence.

I wanted to find out how these men had landed up in this unforgiving place.

I was also determined to gain enough insight so that I could respond wisely each time a fed-up person complained that prisoners "live in five-star conditions while we toil and support them".

What I found in that prison cell was anything but five-star. Men in orange overalls were packed like sardines in a room whose tiny windows hardly let in any sun. A confrontation started. One inmate had opened the door for some respite from the oppressive heat; another could not abide the green flies that came through the open door. A truce had to be brokered because every day these men spent 18 hours holed up in that cell. Even someone passing wind could ignite a war.

The prisoners bombarded me with a litany of complaints: badly cooked food, "stingy" portions, inadequate healthcare and abusive warders.

As they did their utmost to win my sympathy, I thought of all the tears I'd shed for a loved one who had died too soon. I remembered all the broken women and children I'd held after a rapist had violated them, or had killed a loved one. I thought of the chaos that criminals caused by ransacking our homes during burglaries.

These well-spoken, charming men who had brutalised society were whingeing about prison food. One inmate even had the temerity to say he was better off in prison because he was safe from crime.

In that cell I heard the familiar tales of unemployment and grinding poverty. Some had murdered people in a fit of rage after a quarrel. One told me he'd had no intention of murdering the driver of the car he'd hijacked - he had simply panicked.

Others, particularly the younger ones, had been drunk when committing the crime and could not remember what was going on inside their heads at the time.

The heavy moment was broken when another man claimed to be innocent. His mates jibed: "We are all innocent!" "E ba original, man [be original] - that's what I said the first time," one cried.

We know that poverty, unemployment, substance abuse and a lack of role models often cause crime. It follows, then, that if we tackled these problems we could make strides in fighting crime.

I was still confident of this until my eyes settled on Timothy, a childhood friend I hadn't seen in more than 20 years. He came from a well-off Soweto family. He had been bright at school and his parents were hard-working professionals who, like mine, had given their children every chance to make it. Timothy had raped a woman. This was his second stint in prison, but he looked me in the eye and said it would be his last.

Among the prisoners was a politician's son, in for house-breaking. There was a well-spoken university graduate incarcerated for a bank robbery. He could think of no reason why he had done this.

Then there was James, who refused to speak to me. James, who had been an altar boy at our church many years ago, had bludgeoned a man to death in a fight over a woman.

So, in that prison I knew a rapist and a murderer. They both came from my world.

This week police killed two criminals in a high-speed chase in Diepkloof. Timothy, who had been released, was one of them.

South Africa's criminal is a complex individual who cannot be placed in the narrow categories of "poor", "evil" and "uneducated". But still I want to understand him - for my own selfish needs. I want to understand him because I want to be safe.