Judge: non-custodial sentence would send wrong messageAthlete eligible to be considered for paroleUncle indicates Pistorius will not appeal

Oscar Pistorius will spend his first day behind bars on Tuesday after he was sentenced to five years’ jail for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

Looking distressed, the Paralympian clasped the hands of family members as a police officer led him from the dock down 23 steps – paint peeling off the handrail – to holding cells below the high court in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa.

The national prosecuting authority said Pistorius, 27, would go to prison immediately and would be eligible to be considered for parole after serving a third of his sentence. His uncle, Arnold Pistorius, indicated the sprinter would not appeal.

The amputee athlete, known as the “Blade Runner”, stood staring straight ahead as judge Thokozile Masipa announced his sentence for culpable homicide. There was a muted reaction from the families on the front bench of the public gallery after a trial that has otherwise provided high emotion and drama.

Masipa rejected many of the defence team’s arguments and described the evidence of one of their witnesses, social worker Annette Vergeer, as “slapdash and disappointing”. She said she had no reason to believe that South Africa’s prisons would not be able to cater for the needs of a disabled person such as Pistorius.

“It would be a sad day for this country if an impression was created that there is one law for the poor and disadvantaged and another for the rich and famous,” she noted.

Masipa said a judge must strive for a sentence “neither too light nor too severe”, ruling that “a non-custodial sentence will send a wrong message to the community”.

Referring to the Steenkamp family, the judge said: “Nothing I do or say today can reverse what happened to the deceased or her family on 14 February 2013”, but she hopes her judgment would provide some form of closure.

Steenkamp’s father, Barry, said afterwards: “I’m pleased that it’s over.”

The Steenkamps’ lawyer, Dup de Bruyn, told Agence France-Presse that the sentence would probably be served as two years in prison and three years under house arrest. “In effect, he gets three years’ correctional supervision and two years’ direct imprisonment.”

De Bruyn said Steenkamp’s parents were satisfied with the decision. “They feel it’s right.”

Pistorius killed Steenkamp, 29, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day last year when he shot her through the bathroom door at his home in Pretoria. He insisted he thought he was firing at an intruder.

Pistorius was also given a three year sentence, suspended for five years, for a firearms offence.

Prison’s grim record

The Pretoria prison in which Oscar Pistorius will spend at least the next 10 months counts among its more illustrious alumni the South African short-story master Herman Charles Bosman, who was sent there in 1926 after shooting and killing his stepbrother.

Like Pistorius, Bosman claimed it was an accident, but Bosman was convicted of murder and only escaped death row after a reprieve. His resulting prison memoir, Cold Stone Jug, was described by Doris Lessing as “the saddest of all prison books”.

Today Kgosi Mampuru, previously known as Pretoria Central Prison, but renamed to honour a Bapedi chief hanged there in 1883 after being convicted of murder, public violence and revolt, is home to Clive Derby-Lewis and Janusz Walus, convicted of the 1993 assassination of the ANC leader Chris Hani.

Derby-Lewis has twice been attacked by other inmates, most recently in March this year. His lawyer said at the time: “It is safer to go to war than to be in the Kgosi Mampuru prison”.

Pistorius may hope his experience is more similar to that of the Waterkloof Two, Frikkie du Preez and Christoph Bekker, who were sent to the prison after being convicted of killing a homeless man in 2001.

A video of the two emerged earlier this year that appeared to show them drinking alcohol and using mobile phones and computers in their cell, prompting a public outcry and forcing an investigation by Correctional Services. Inmates at Kgosi Mampuru have already told the South African newspaper The Times that a mobile phone was waiting for Pistorius. One prisoner said they had been following his trial on TV using mobile satellite devices, and that the athlete would be protected by his fame and money. Rebecca Davis