Author(s)

Publisher

Publication Year

ISBN: 9780776606668

Categories: ,

 
View more details about this title
on the publisher's website:

Colonial Systems of Control

Criminal Justice in Nigeria

A pioneering book on prisons in West Africa, Colonial Systems of Control: Criminal Justice in Nigeria is the first comprehensive presentation of life inside a West African prison. Chapters by prisoners inside Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos, Nigeria are published alongside chapters by scholars and activists. While prisoners document the daily realities and struggles of life inside a Nigerian prison, scholar and human rights activist Viviane Saleh-Hanna provides historical, political, and academic contexts and analyses of the penal system in Nigeria. The European penal models and institutions imported to Nigeria during colonialism are exposed as intrinsically incoherent with the community-based conflict-resolution principles of most African social structures and justice models. This book presents the realities of imprisonment in Nigeria while contextualizing the colonial legacies that have resulted in the inhumane brutalities that are endured on a daily basis.

Contributors

Viviane Saleh-Hanna

Viviane Saleh-Hanna is assistant professor of Crime and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Chapter Title Contents Contributors Pages Year Price

Preview

Introduction 14 $1.40

Preview

Within contemporary African society and the diaspora there is an understanding that colonialism has transformed into neocolonialism. 38 $3.80

Preview

This chapter looks at the historical circumstances that came together to implement the Nigerian Prison Service and how they have affected its performance. What challenges has the institution been … 14 $1.40

Preview

This chapter makes a demand not only on Nigeria’s political and civil society leaders but also on the international community, particularly policy-makers in Europe and the United States … 50 $5.00

Preview

After the abolition of slavery and the slave trade towards the end of the eighteenth century, people around the world, particularly the black race, were gladdened in body and in mind because it … 6 $0.60

Preview

I, Clever Akporherhe, stayed in Kirikin medium security prison for a period of one year and six months. On the day of my admission I became seriously sick. I complained to the officer or warden, … 4 $0.40

Preview

This system does not have an agenda for reformation or rehabilitation. It is a system of practical exploitation and subjugation through constant pressure. The threat under law has a hidden … 10 $1.00

Preview

Prisoners are rejected people, abandoned by society and ignored by the world as a whole. Social discomfort with the unknown leaves those ” tagged” as prisoners to become the … 6 $0.60

Preview

I am currently in prison for an alleged robbery offence but have yet to face trial. In Nigeria, if you don’t have money, you cannot come out of prison, sometimes for life. 1 $0.10

Preview

I was arrested on April 17,1992. I was taken to the Lagos State Police Command in Ikeja, where I was hung like a monkey from the ceiling, with my hands holding up the rest of my body. 3 $0.30

Preview

I have been in this prison for nine years now, but something that I cannot forget until they put me inside a grave took place on May 20, 1995. On that fateful day there was a slaughter like I … 4 $0.40

Preview

The epoch of political instability, chaos, ethnic rivalry, and the continued existence of colonial boundaries defining nations in West Africa gave birth to a period of armed insurgence and war in … 13 $1.30

Preview

The reflections presented in this chapter emerge from a daily journal I kept during my time as a community organizer and activist inside Nigerian prisons. The experiences I had were inundated … 50 $5.00

Preview

This chapter offers a comparative approach to issues faced by criminalized and imprisoned women in several African countries. It also highlights the voices of resistance, especially women … 22 $2.20

Preview

The Daniel case problematizes the common-sense equation between crime and punishment, and demonstrates that what is considered “criminal” is situational and culturally specific. In … 22 $2.20

Preview

It has been argued that the mentally ill are victims of two failed public policies: the failure of public officials to ensure an effective mental health system, and an overly ambitious criminal … 23 $2.30

Preview

This chapter focuses on women in the contemporary northern Nigerian context: their interactions with pluralities of law in northern Nigeria, and the modes of resistance they employ in facing … 61 $6.10

Preview

Music was used as a culturally appropriate tool of political resistance by Fela Kuti in Nigeria during an era of military regimes. Within the historical and spiritual contexts of Fela’s … 22 $2.20

Preview

The concept and implementation of community service orders are presented as a practical alternative to imprisonment. The chapter also puts forward the rationale for the call for more viable and … 15 $1.50

Preview

This chapter examines the indigenous justice system of the Igbo of southeast Nigeria from restorative, transformative, and communitarian principles. 22 $2.20

Preview

Two questions about the penal abolitionist perspective are whether it represents is a theory of crime and whether it can or does address the nature of crime. Here I will illustrate that penal … 40 $4.00

Preview

Following a long line of academic literature, and growing through activist affiliations, this chapter outlines penal abolitionism as it was presented to the Nigerian community in efforts to … 32 $3.20