Book Review: Carceral Afterlives: Prisons, Detention, and Punishment in Postcolonial Uganda by Katherine Bruce-Lockhart
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806231199851 |
| Author | Denis Augustin Samnick |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
Book Reviews
Katherine Bruce-Lockhart, Carceral Afterlives: Prisons, Detention, and Punishment in Postcolonial
Uganda, Ohio University Press: Athens, OH, 2022; 302 pp.: 9780821424780, US$36.95 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Denis Augustin Samnick, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Almost a quarter of a century after the publication of Florence Bernault’s seminal book
(1999) on the history of confinement in Africa, this new book by Katherine
Bruce-Lockhart stands out as one of the most detailed publications on the historical con-
tinuities and discontinuities of prison punishment in an African country. The author pro-
vides the historical context needed to understand the past and contemporary political life
in Uganda. Beyond the repressive dimension of incarceration, the author shows the pol-
itical, social, cultural, and economic uses that the colonial and post-colonial authorities
made of prison in Uganda.
The author presents three prison services, which form the basis of what she calls the
prison system: the prisons of the central government, still called the Uganda Prison
Service (UPS); the prisons of the Buganda kingdom managed by King Kabaka
Muteesa; and the prisons of local governments managed by local chiefs under indirect
rule (p. 25). The colonial administration presented this prison system as an essential
part of its civilizing mission. The forced labour imposed was supposed to have a peda-
gogical function that would help prisoners avoid re-offending and acquire professional
skills.
However, forced labour has been used strategically throughout Uganda’s history. The
colonial administration, for example, used prison labour to meet production needs, such
as making uniforms and running the iron railways and electricity companies during the
Second World War. When Oboté was President of Uganda for the first time from 1966
to 1971, he helped to multiply the agricultural production capacity of prisons throughout
the country. The UPS, which had 5000 acres of land in 1965, found itself with almost
70,000 acres in 1969 under Oboté’s presidency. For the Ugandan public, the prisons
were an educational place where outside visitors were invited to learn about agriculture
and animal husbandry (p. 51). In reality, the author shows us how prisons were used in the
policy of nationalizing the Ugandan economy ‘Self Reliance’by Idi Amin Dada, who
came to power in 1971. Local industries relied on prisoners as unpaid labour following
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(4) 676–682
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13624806231199851
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
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