Whatever the form of governance, a nation's judiciary, police, and penal system are inherently coercive. It is crucial, then, for these institutions' policies and operations to be transparent, and when their employees' behavior is inconsistent with the relevant professional codes, statutes, and departmental policies, that people are held accountable. To some extent, public access to court proceedings (e.g., arraignments, trials) act to restrain judicial abuse of power. Likewise, as a significant proportion of police activity occurs in the public domain, the risk of public outrage acts to constrain serious police misconduct. What occurs inside prisons, however, is a different matter: in many countries, prisons are closed-institutions, meaning that the odds the public will directly view staff misconduct are next to nil. To promote the principles of transparency and official accountability in prisons, then, prisons need to be monitored by independent and impartial oversight mechanisms. Prison inspectorates are one such vehicle in a handful of countries: for example, there are at least three non-governmental inspectorates operating in the United States and government-run inspectorates in the United Kingdom and South Africa. Like their counterparts elsewhere (e.g., police monitoring bodies), when carrying out their mandates prison inspectorates confront various obstacles like inadequate funding, resistance or outright hostility from those being monitored, and co-optation or "capture" by the overseen. This study looked at the last obstacle within the South African context. Created by statute a decade ago, the South African Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons (JIOP) is intended to be independent of the Department of Correctional Services, and seeks to ensure prisoners' right to humane imprisonment through its legislative mandates to visit and inspect prisons and report its findings to the executive branch. One issue addressed in this study was the extent to which JIOP staff had been captured by prison officials. Next, the study examined possible individual-level predictors of capture and consequences of capture. Finally, some study implications for the JIOP and regulatory oversight scholars are discussed.