Ruth Hopkins is an award-winning investigative journalist based in the UK.
Ruth worked as a journalist and editor with the Wits Justice Project in Johannesburg from 2012 to 2018, producing content about wrongful convictions, lengthy remand detention, police brutality and various other criminal justice issues.
She wrote a book on trafficking women into Europe, which was published in 2005 (Ik laat je nooit meer gaan, I will never let you go again), based on five years of research in Albania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and the Netherlands.
Ruth broke an international story in 2013 on private security company G4S’s South African prison. In 2016 Ruth was awarded the Sylvester Stein fellowship which she used to study the role race and class play in mass incarceration in the United States and how popular dissent against systematic injustice can lead to reform. Her non-fiction investigative book on the private prison, Misery Merchants (Life and Death in a Private South African Prison), was published in March 2020 by Jacana Media. The international award-winning documentary Prison for Profit was based on Ruth’s work.
Ruth is the founding editor of the Private Security Network, a transnational network of investigative journalists from around the globe who are investigating private security company G4S’s global security operation. See: www.privatesecurity.network
Ruth is a member of onderzoekscollectief Spit in the Netherlands.
