Nigerian Women in Prison: Hostages in Law
From: Colonial Systems of Control
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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 this chapter I suggest that this rupture does not exist in Nigeria as an outcome of a punitive version of Islamic fundamentalism alone. The arbitrary and unjust punishment of Nigerian women does not occur only under sharia law. Rather, the entire colonial system of criminal justice is based on the criminalization of innocent black women.
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Contributors
Biko Agozino
Biko Agozino is a professor of sociology, Coordinator of the Criminology Unit and the Acting Head of Behavioral Sciences at The Univerisity of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. His teaching and research interests include crime and social order, research methods, theoretical criminology, race-class-gender articulation, sociology, social statistics, law and popular culture, and comparative justice systems. His books include: Black Women and the Criminal Justice System (1997), Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Migration Research (edited, 2000); Nigeria: Democratising a Militarised Civil Society (coauthored, 2001); Counter-Colonial Criminology (2003); and Pan African Issues in Crime and Justice (coedited, 2004). He was educated at the University of Edinburgh (PhD), the University of Cambridge (MPhil), and the University of Calabar (BSc). He is the series editor for the Ashgate Publishers Interdisciplinary Research Series in Ethnic, Gender, and Class Relations and the editor-in-chief of the African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies.
