Introduction: African penal histories in global perspective
| Author | Erin Braatz,Katherine Bruce-Lockhart,Stacey Hynd |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221109542 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective |
Introduction: African penal
histories in global
perspective
Erin Braatz
Suffolk University Law School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Katherine Bruce-Lockhart
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
Stacey Hynd
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
It has been over twenty years since the publication of Florence Bernault’s edited volume
Enfermement, prison et châtiments en Afrique: du 19e siècle à nos jours (1999), a first of
its kind collection that helped establish the field of African penal history.
1
Since then, this
field has greatly expanded (see Alexander and Kynoch, 2011; Roberts 2013; Waller,
2017) with innovative research on topics such as capital and corporal punishment
(Anderson, 2005; Hynd, 2008; Gendry, 2018; Pierce, 2001; Ocobock, 2012), colonial
and postcolonial prisons (Thioub, 1999; Branch 2005; Diallo 2005; Braatz 2015; Hynd
2015b; Brunet-La Ruche 2016; Konaté 2018; Machava 2019; Bruce-Lockhart 2022),
prison protests (Filippi, 2012), forced and penal labour (Sene, 2004; Hynd, 2015a;
Tiquet 2018), indigenous forms of punishment (Braatz 2015; Balakrishnan, 2020), pol-
itical imprisonment (Alexander 2012; Branche 2014; Munochiveyi 2014; Deslaurier
2019), detention without trial (Lobban, 2021), detention, re-education or concentration
camps (Elkins, 2005; McCracken, 2011; Cruz and Curto 2017, Machava, 2019), and
the relationship between penal reform and prison violence (Sarkin, 2008; Gillespie,
2011). Such studies have highlighted the significant of race and ethnicity to African
penal regimes, but also their gendered (Zimudzi, 2004; Bruce-Lockhart, 2014), gener-
ational (Fourchard 2011; Hynd 2018) and economic/capitalist dynamics. This scholar-
ship has not only provided a clearer picture of penal ideas and institutions on the
African continent but has also offered insights into wider questions on the relationship
Corresponding author:
Katherine Bruce-Lockhart, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Canada.
Email: kbrucelo@uwaterloo.ca
Special Issue: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective
Punishment & Society
2022, Vol. 24(5) 759–770
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745221109542
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