Book Review: Confinement, Punishment and Prisons in Africa by Morelle, Marie, Frédéric Le Marcis, and Julia Hornberger

Abstract

Prisons in Africa are usually depicted through their horrific conditions of detention or as institutions in need of reform. In this volume, Marie Morelle, Frédéric Le Marcis and Julia Hornberger bring together contributions to “break with the archetypal stereotypes – both monolithic and incomplete – frequently perpetuated about the prison in Africa, and offer instead a nuanced critique of prison experiences in diverse detention facilities across the continent” (xii). This collection is a result of the multidisciplinary research programme “Economy of Penalty and Prison in Africa” (2015–2019). More than 20 years after Bernault’s pioneering edited volume Enfermement, prison et châtiments en Afrique (1999) to historicise the emergence of prison in Africa, this collaboration revives prison studies on the continent by adopting a strong ethnographic approach. The contributors, mostly French and South African, share Jefferson, Martin and Bandyopadhavy’s (2014) concern to describe how prisons function and Wacquant’s (2002) willingness to conduct in-depth observations. In 10 countries and at different times, they aim to “analyse different architectural logics, as well as the gendered, racial, political, and economic valence of prisons and their symbolic ubiquity in nearly all imaginations of the state” (xiii). Due to certain barriers in accessing the prisons, some contributors have led their investigations outside of the prison walls. The editors offer a very interesting reflexive discussion on the epistemological and ethical consequences of the different methodological approaches. They demonstrate how the diversity of approaches allows us to grasp the prison in its full complexity. This volume is structured in four parts. Part I, “The carceral imprint,” mainly adopts a historical approach to show the mutual relation between prison and society and how they structure each other. Christine Deslaurier historicises the prison phenomenon in Burundi by showing how the colonial logics have shaped the language and design of the carceral system. Romain Tiquet focuses on the written complaints of Senegalese prisoners in mobile penal camps that bypass censorship to question the notion of reform. Sabine Planel explores the practice of confinement in a contemporary developmental regime, Ethiopia, where it is used to control the peasant reluctant to use fertiliser. In newly