This project investigates the extent to which culture, working in dynamic tension with other processes, shapes and is in turn shaped by penal systems. In particular, it examines how British penal regimes were transformed as they were transferred to the colonial Gold Coast both as the colonial government adopted and altered those systems to meet its own unique needs and as native rulers transformed the British penal system to align it with indigenous beliefs and practices that predated colonial rule. It is hypothesized that these colonial transformations were subsequently transferred back to Europe and further influenced penal developments there. The question raised by these transfers is whether the form the penal systems took was determined by the culture of the colonizing power, by the indigenous peoples it encountered in its implementation, or by other factors such as changes that were being wrought in the colonial economy. Data analysis methods include discourse, statistical, and legal analysis along with archival ethnography to determine which ideas and penal structures were circulating throughout the British Empire and how they were transformed by the ideas and structures already in place in the Gold Coast.
This interdisciplinary study will contribute to the sociology of punishment, which often seeks to explain penal systems by pointing to the effects of social structure, material or power relations, viewed in isolation from the underlying culture. Rather than focusing on a single factor in isolation, this project will examine the role of culture in relation to other processes in shaping penal systems. The research will also broaden the field of the sociology of punishment, which has been primarily focused on Europe and the United States, by studying an underrepresented region and country while also focusing on processes of institutional transfer that have shaped the histories of penal systems throughout the world.
This project investigated the extent to which culture, working in dynamic tension with other processes, shapes and is in turn shaped by penal systems. In particular, it examined how British penal regimes were transformed as they were transferred to the colonial Gold Coast (modern day Ghana). These colonial penal systems were shaped by interactions among the cultures of the colonizing power and the indigenous peoples as well as other factors, such as broader changes in the colonial economy. The research sought to engage in an archival ethnography of colonial prisons (both of the British colonial government and native states) in order to explain in detail the role of these factors in accounting for the changes British penal institutions underwent as they were implemented in the Gold Coast. Research was conducted in the national archives in Ghana, as well as the native state archives of the Asante and Akyem Abuakwa, two highly developed native states. Additional research was conducted in the British National Archives. Although the current findings are preliminary, this research found that the most significant explanation for the form penal institutions took within the Gold Coast colony was ideological and cultural rather than material. For both the British colonial officials and then for indigenous leaders, prisons represented a crucial component of sovereignty, civilization and modernity. Through the prisons the British saw themselves as asserting their sovereign authority, imposing their conceptions of civilization on colonized individuals, and attempting to transform the colonial society and its institutional structure. British prisons were seen as both a tool in service of these values and a substantive symbol of their realization and they were held out as a civilized form of punishment in opposition to the ‘barbaric’ practices of indigenous leaders. Indigenous rulers responded to these arguments by creating their own prisons as a means of reasserting jurisdiction over their subjects by adopting a form of punishment that the British themselves had deemed civilized. In order to make this claim successfully, however, these leaders had to demonstrate their ability to construct what the British deemed modern, civilized institutions, most importantly, prisons. It is this rhetorical discourse that explains why institutions that differed so radically as the British prisons in England, the colonial prisons and the native state prisons, could all claim the same institutional moniker. What united them was their role in furthering a certain conception of the values of sovereignty, civilization, and modernity. This study contributes to the sociology of punishment, which often seeks to explain penal systems by pointing to the effects of social structure, material or power relations, viewed in isolation from the underlying culture. Rather than focusing on a single factor in isolation, this project examines the role of culture in relation to other processes in shaping penal systems. Furthermore, It pushes the field to consider the ideological uses to which penal systems are put. The research also broadens the field of the sociology of punishment, which has been primarily focused on Europe and the United States, by studying an underrepresented region and country while also focusing on processes of institutional transfer that have shaped the histories of penal systems throughout the world.
