Category: interdisciplinarity

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Interdisciplinary Working

By Tammy Ayres and Dylan Kerrigan

Does Interdisciplinary Methodology Really Work?

The US public intellectual and theorist Stanley Fish once stated that interdisciplinary research is ‘very hard to do’ and almost ‘impossible’ to pull off (1989:106). For Fish, this is because within the social sciences and humanities there are social and disciplinary structures that claim and defend their territory, alongside the general ‘unavailability of a perspective that is not culturally determined’ (Fish 1989:107). Whilst this paper cannot speak to the difficulties that other studies have faced when attempting to accomplish interdisciplinary integration, we do offer a didactive set of experiences and insights based on our own research. This includes the importance of interdisciplinary working within the social sciences and between the social sciences, particularly in contemporary society.

What is Interdisciplinarity?

According to Repko, one way the interdisciplinary research process can be described is as ‘a process of drawing on disciplinary perspectives and integrating their insights…a discipline’s experts produce insights into a problem or class of problems. These insights typically reflect the discipline’s perspective’ (Repko, 2008:54). Drawing on these insights, an interdisciplinary research team then needs to ‘identify the sources of conflict between them, create common ground among them, integrate them, and produce an interdisciplinary understanding of the problem’ (Repko, 2008:54). For others, like Szostak et al, the process is more contrived, and interdisciplinary research should normally follow a multi-step-guide (Szostak, Wentworth, and Sebberson, 2002); while for Mackey interdisciplinarity is an ‘intuitive process’ that often ‘implies the appearance of something new, something unexpected. Thus, it would be hard to capture the process or the product by a step or rule’ (2002:126). Aside from the reality that different scholars have different takes on the process of interdisciplinarity, it is also important to note here the philosophical distinction Hacking makes between interdisciplinary research and multi-disciplinary work (2004:4–6). Interdisciplinary work is not that which simply views the same problematic through different disciplinary lenses. It is more than ‘trespassing’ to use Hacking’s terminology (Barry and Born, 2013:88). Rather for Hacking, Repko and others, interdisciplinary research must integrate different perspectives to properly be considered interdisciplinary

While interdisciplinary working can be challenging at times, it can also be incredibly beneficial, as has been demonstrated on this project, which has involved a multi-disciplinary research team (history, criminology, English, politics, anthropology, sociology, and international relations) working in collaboration with practitioners and policy makers in Guyana (e.g. Guyana Prison Service (GPS) and the Mental Health Unit) to research the definition, extent, experience and treatment of mental, neurological and substance use (MNS) disorders in Guyana’s jails: both among inmates and the people who work with them. One of the main aims was to model new interdisciplinary ways of working and to produce policy-relevant materials on mental health, cognitive impairment and addiction among prisoners and prison officers, which is the focus of this blog.

We certainly came to ‘listen and learn from the complex worldviews and experiences’ (Noxolo, 2017:344) of the local stakeholders and participants we worked with. However, no one research project can ever overcome the structural relations and hierarchies between the Global North and South, and the concurrent ‘colonialist approach’ Pat Noxolo describes as embedded in the ‘recolonisation’ of UK developmental research funding such as that provided by the ESRC (2017:342-344). As such we tried to be conscious of the unevenness of our relationships with partners on the ground in Guyana and worked to build the capacities and skills of our research partners and collaborators, such as interviewing skills, data analysis, writing skills, exchange visits to the UK and more.

What is Disciplinarity?

Disciplinarity and it’s creation of knowledges, despite being enunciated from a position of neutrality, is imbued with power. Universities and knowledge were not always structured in this way. Like everything, the disciplinarity that dominates the modern academy is socially constructed and representative of its epoch. Disciplines profess to be creating independent and objective knowledge. When really they are billiard balls or silos bouncing up against one another. Each discipline structures the knowledge produced within it and that is anything but neutral or being objective. Each discipline proposes/proffers its own take on a particular phenomenon as scholars operating within disciplines become the experts in their particular area/field. Each discipline and its experts create their own truths. These truths/findings can often be different/inconsistent across disciplines, and often one discipline is seen as superior to other disciplines. This has been particularly true in relation to certain research methods, with quantitative studies often trumping qualitative research methods, despite both being integral to the construction of knowledge and a comprehensive understanding of the world. Each discipline professes to have the answer as they shape our perceptions of the world and order the production and dissemination of knowledge in their particular area. Yet, no single discipline can adequately capture and explain the world and its multifaceted issues, which has been recognised as interdisciplinarity is now promoted across academics, policy-makers and practitioners in order to create/provide a truly comprehensive understanding. Thus, the only way this project could attempt to address and meet its aims and objective, was to adopt a truly interdisciplinary approach as outlined in the ensuing discussion. It is also worth acknowledging here a key feature of interdisciplinary research is ‘that it allow[s] researchers freedom from disciplinary constraints’ (Repko, Newell, and Szostak, 2011:4).

Our Research Project

The research has involved academics from different disciplines working together to share knowledge, expertise and skills, alongside practitioners working in the area to ensure the multifaceted nature of MNS disorders in Guyana is accurately captured, and this information used to create effective evidence-based policy recommendations, training materials and improved processes for the Guyana Prison Service and inmates. This interdisciplinarity is also reflected in the methodologies (e.g., archives and records; and focus groups, workshops and interviews), information/data (e.g. historical records, contemporary narratives, surveys) and the theoretical/conceptual frameworks used in our publications (colonial carcerality, biopolitics, colonial amnesia, hauntology and more). This mixture of methods, data and concepts was a function of one another’s areas of expertise, and their active combination to enhance academic, practitioner and public understanding of MNS disorders in the context of Guyana’s jails as well as impacts on prison security, the administration of criminal justice, and prisoner well-being, rights and equality.

Only by combining our different disciplinary approaches could the multifaceted nature, context and background of MNS disorders in Guyana’s jails today be understood. Although traditionally academia has placed us all in our individual disciplinary silos it is now acknowledged that this limits/hinders our ability to provide a full and comprehensive picture. Whether it is because the discipline focuses on the individual to offer a micro-level explanation or whether it provides an a-historical account of incarceration, neither shows the full picture nor captures the multifaceted nature of human life/existence/the world. It is here that the interdisciplinarity of this team has come into its own. Historical data has been synthesised with contemporary data obtained from interviews and focus groups, to create a synthesis of knowledge pertaining to MNS disorders in Guyana’s jails. Triangulating data not only from the past with the present, but also via a range of sources both historically as well as contemporary (e.g. interviews, focus groups and official records/documents) created a more robust/comprehensive picture/understanding of transhistorical connections and continuities. We filled in the gaps and pushed back against the more common sociology of absences often found in such transhistorical work. Only by studying the past can the present be understood, particularly when looking at many contemporary challenges and societal issues from colonialism and slavery to mental ill-health and substance use as we have on this project. The legacies of colonialism are evident across contemporary Guyana, and nowhere is this more evident than in their prisons.

Our Outputs

Working together has helped create some timely and helpful outputs that include academic working papers (Vol 4 (2021) (le.ac.uk), journal articles, public facing materials (Historical Overviews of Guyana’s Prisons, 1814-1966 (figshare.com), newspaper articles (Mental health in Guyana’s Prisons: a direct legacy of the country’s colonial history? (figshare.com), policy recommendations, training materials and these blogs.

The past helps us to decipher what has and has not worked, and supposedly learn from it, although this is not always the case, as many of the mistakes/issues we understood and that are present in Guyana’s jails today epitomise those in the past. Whether it is the prison itself and its infrastructure (Anderson et al. 2020), substance use (Moss and Toner 2021), prison officers (Ayres 2021), mental ill-health (Anderson, Moss and Adams 2021) experience of prisoners (Ayres and Kerrigan 2021). However, this project was also about sharing skills and learning from each other, as the criminologist and anthropologist undertook archival research, while the historians facilitated and even led interviews and focus groups meaning that all members of the team will finish this project with a new set of transferable skills. This included our partners on the ground who in the context of Covid stepped up and took on an even bigger role in the project around data collection and analysis than was originally planned.

Our breaking down of silos approach has also helped us to build robust relationships and mutual respect among the team, which has been integral to and aided the intellectual collaborations. Whether it was designing the interview schedules or developing some of our theoretical and conceptual ideas we have used to frame this material, we sparked off each other to work on and develop the ideas and frameworks evident in our outputs as we all attempted to avoid using largely Western literature/concepts created in the global north to describe issues in the global south, although this has been at times challenging. It is here we worked with our Guyanese partners – at the University of Guyana, GPS and the mental health unit – to create research/theories/concepts that are specific and more appropriate/applicable to Guyana explicitly, and the Caribbean more generally.

Summary

Whilst interdisciplinary working is universally accepted as challenging and hard to do, the resultant benefits are equally acknowledged as substantial. For the academics involved in such projects, it can be inspiring and lead to ground-breaking work/partnerships; for user groups, it can radically improve the relevance of answers provided to difficult questions and complex phenomenon; and for research partners and commissioners, it can drive the development of impactful proposals and projects.

It can also create effective interdisciplinary teams that not only enjoy working together, but do so collaboratively, respecting each other’s strengths and weakness, as ideas are discussed, developed and amalgamated to create new and important insight and understanding. In this sense, we all learned from each other, but also learned together.

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Prisoner Health, Human Rights and Social Recovery

By Martin Halliwell

On 21 October 2011, at a summit in Rio de Janeiro, the World Health Organization (WHO) released the Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health, its strongest statement yet of the need to tackle health inequities within and between countries. Focusing on the WHO’s commitment to health as a fundamental right rather than a privilege, the Rio Declaration recognised that to eliminate inequities would require the sustained ‘engagement of all sectors of government, of all segments of society, and of all members of the international community’. By viewing social determinants in both economic and psychosocial terms, the declaration made three policy recommendations: ‘to improve daily living conditions; to tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money and resources; and to measure and understand the problem and assess the impact of action’. The World Health Assembly’s adoption of this policy framework in 2012 was an effort to embed what the Rio Declaration called ‘an intersectoral approach’ to analysing how social groups are classified with respect to quality of life, comorbidities and access to health care.

A decade on from the Rio Summit, the governance role of the WHO is more critical than ever to ensure that economic pressures, polarizing ideologies and faltering international accords, which we have witnessed globally in the 2010s and early 2020s, do not compromise the ideal of health as a fundamental right. Despite this stated imperative, the WHO has been slow to attend to the psychosocial needs of prisoners, especially those incarcerated in the Global South. This sluggishness is despite a growing body of research across the humanities, social sciences and life sciences that shows how incarceration is itself a ‘chronic health condition’, with ‘social, biological, and psychological elements’ which are both ‘poorly documented and poorly addressed’. [1] As an April 2022 School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) workshop on the colonialities of incarceration makes clear, this trend not only privileges Euro- and US-centric analyses but it can lead to an exceptionalising (and sometimes racializing) of human rights abuses in the Global South.

The WHO’s Health in Prisons Programme
While heeding the warnings of the SOAS workshop, it is important not to overlook the ways in which WHO has addressed prisoner health, albeit with a largely European focus. We can pinpoint 1995 as a breakthrough year for WHO, with the formation of its Health in Prisons Programme (HPP) across eight European countries, with the aim of sharing good practice and raising national standards, as embodied by the Declaration on Prison Health as Part of Public Health. This 2003 WHO declaration states that economic pressures and social challenges faced by a nation state cannot excuse a government’s failure to uphold their duty of prisoner care, including ‘effective methods of prevention, screening, and treatment’.

This ideal is shared by NGOs, such as Penal Reform International (PRI), established in 1990 to raise global standards in prisons and share best practice, with a particular focus on prisoner support in Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia. In its worldwide emphasis, PRI highlights human rights violations, noting that reducing overcrowding and meeting (or exceeding) the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules) are ‘vitally important components of a prisoner’s journey’. [2] Nonetheless, as Katherine McLeod and colleagues have recently argued, there remains ‘a critical lack of evidence on current governance models and an urgent need for evaluation and research, particularly in low- and middle-income countries’. [3]

A case in point is the European focus of HPP. Despite its growth from an initial eight to forty-four national members, the 2014 HPP publication Prisons and Health acknowledges that incarceration falls disproportionately on poor and vulnerable communities, at a time when researchers across a span of disciplines were calling for attention to the health needs of women and older prisoners on a global scale. [4] Despite its Eurocentrism, Prisons and Health develops the insights of Good Governance for Prisoner Health in the 21st Century (2013), with the aim of facilitating ‘better prison health practices’ with respect to human rights and medical ethics; communicable and noncommunicable diseases; oral health; risk factors; vulnerable groups; and prison health management’. [5] Calling for prisoners to receive an equivalent standard of health care to other citizens, Prisons and Health defines the ‘prisoner as patient’ with the same rights as all other patients. We might take issue with the power dynamics of the ‘prisoner as patient’ concept, especially the implication that patients are powerless (or have only limited agency) in the face of diagnostics and interventions. Yet the report focuses as much on governmental responsibility as on ensuring that prisoners have basic health rights and benefit from prison health services that are integrated ‘into regional and national systems’, within and beyond their experience of incarceration. [6]

Clinical Recovery and Social Recovery
Estimating that 40 per cent of prisoners encounter mental health problems during their jail time (some reports suggest this percentage is much higher), not only does Prisons and Health highlight the multiple determinants and co-causalities of mental ill health, but it points to the psychosocial needs of prisoners, noting that ‘clinical recovery’ and ‘social recovery’ are two distinct processes with differing timelines. [7] One of the missing factors in assessing these recovery arcs, as medical anthropologists Johanna Crane and Kelsey Pascoe argue, is that often appraisals of prisoner health fail to engage with what prisoners themselves identify as their needs. Crane’s and Pascoe’s research in Washington State is closely informed by interviews with prisoners who often describe a ‘slow erosion of their well-being over the course of their imprisonment’ due to ‘a frustrating mix of regimentation and unpredictability that derailed their ability to transition to life beyond prison’. [8] This mix is particularly acute for prisoners who experience solitary confinement or who feel locked-in by an aggressive course of medication administered to manage erratic or psychotic behaviour.

Yet ‘erosion of well-being’ can also result from overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, prisoner-to-prisoner violence, mistreatment by prison staff, or health needs that might be either undiagnosed or overtreated. Not only are these realities in tension with the goal of ‘social recovery’, but they evoke what sociologist Erving Goffman calls a conspiratorial form of ‘secret management’ practised by social institutions beyond the prison, where wounds continue to be inflicted on ex-prisoners via tacitly aligned systems that collude with overt forms of carceral management. [9] The WHO’s reminder of health as a human right is pivotal to ensure this kind of collusion does not occur. However, this may not be enough to offset rights violations that can lead to long-term erosion of selfhood, which, in turn, may lead to further offences or to debilitating mental health experiences that jeopardise rehabilitation.

PAHO and Culturally Congruent Research
A related issue is the lack of regional and cultural specificity in these kinds of overview studies, even though PRI’s 2019 edition of Global Prison Trends provides brief case studies from Thailand and Australia to offset the Eurocentric focus of HPP. The dearth of regionally sensitive studies on prison health is particularly relevant for the Caribbean, as University of West Indies psychiatrists Frederick Hickling and Gerard Hutchinson have argued. [10] Although WHO and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) have raised awareness and standards of best practice for prisoner health care, their publications tend to ignore both the historical legacies of slavery and colonialism and the ‘clash of cultures and ideologies’ that cut across national identities. [11] At a basic level, in many PAHO publications, the Caribbean is often overshadowed by a Latin American focus on Central and South America, or where Anglophone and Francophone distinctions within the Caribbean are overlooked.

This need for culturally congruent studies is vital, but it is also important to recognise that PAHO has played a major role since the 1990s in working with national governments across the Caribbean to combat health conditions arising from poverty, ranging from pan-regional studies, including the 1998 survey Health in the Americas, through to country specific reports, such as the 2012 Guyana: Faces, Voices and Places in Guyana. These interventions include improving health surveillance; increasing epidemiological capacity; expanding the pool of trained health officials; tackling environmental health; promoting healthy lifestyles; and highlighting co-morbidities in prisons, especially around mental health and addiction. PAHO continues to advocate for good health-care practice and improving public health communications, but its reports tend to be oriented towards disease surveillance and, when they deal with mental health, fail to give a holistic account of what clinical and social recovery might mean within (and beyond) a carceral environment.

Faced with this regionally uneven advocacy and policy landscape, our ESRC-funded project, ‘MNS Disorders in Guyana’s Jails: 1825 to the Present’, shows why it is equally important to account for the long arc of colonialism in the Caribbean and to attend carefully to the intersectoral factors that exacerbate ‘the pains of imprisonment’. [12] Since 2019, we have witnessed the collaborative efforts of the Guyana Prison Service and Guyana’s Ministry of Health to improve systems and governance, including the adoption of holistic health care, with the aim of transitioning ‘from a penal system to that of a correctional facility’. [13]

Nevertheless, as our project publications show, the shadow of the colonial penal system still looms large in Guyana’s prisons. Not only do health screening procedures for new prisoners need improving, but overcrowding, unsanitary condition and inadequate care continue to jeopardise UN standards intended to safeguard prisoner health. [14] Intensified WHO and PAHO collaboration will enable Caribbean national governments to share best practice, but ministries also need to improve prison infrastructure and to facilitate a meaningful shift of discourse from ‘management’ towards ‘care’ and a reorientation from eroded to positive identities. A sharper emphasis on ‘social recovery’ may prompt officials to think about prison as a transitory phase within a life-journey rather than a defining experience from which it is difficult to recover. Not only it is crucial to recognise the multiple determinants of prisoner health, but to remember that it is the collaborative task of government, prison and health care officials to uphold human rights and prepare the ground for released prisoners to ‘lead meaningful and contributing lives as active citizens’. [15]

Martin Halliwell is Professor of American Thought and Culture in the School of Arts, University of Leicester. He is the author of American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics (University of California Press, 2021) and his co-edited volume The Edinburgh Companion to the Politics of American Health will be published by Edinburgh University Press in August 2022. He is grateful for feedback while preparing this blog from Professor Clare Anderson, Dr Tammy Ayres and Dr Dylan Kerrigan.

[1]. Johanna Crane and Kelsey Pascoe. ‘Becoming Institutionalized: Incarceration as a Chronic Health Condition’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 35(3), 2020, 2–20.

[2]. Penal Reform International, Global Prison Trends 2019, ‘Healthcare in Prisons’ supplement: https://cdn.penalreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/PRI-Global-prison-trends-report-2019_WEB.pdf. On prison overcrowding, see also Morag MacDonald, ‘Overcrowding and its Impact on Prison Conditions and Health’, International Journal of Prisoner Health, 14(2), June 2018, 65–8.

[3]. Katherine E. McLeod et al., ‘Global Prison Health Care Governance and Health Equity: A Critical Lack of Evidence’, American Journal of Public Health, 110(3), March 2020, 303.

[4]. See, for example, Seena Fazel et al., ‘Mental Health of Prisoners: Prevalence, Adverse Outcomes and Interventions’, Lancet Psychiatry, 3, 2016, 871–81.

[5]. Stefan Enggist et al., Prisons and Health (Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2014), i.

[6]. Enggist et al., Prisons and Health, 1–2.

[7]. Ibid., 87–8. See also David Pilgrim, ‘“Recovery” and Current Mental Health Policy’, Chronic Illness, 4, December 2008, 295–304.

[8]. Johanna T. Crane, ‘Mass Incarceration and Health Inequity in the United States, in The Edinburgh Companion to the Politics of American Health, ed. Martin Halliwell and Sophie A. Jones (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022), 520.

[9]. Erving Goffman, ‘The Insanity of Place’ (1969), in Relations in Public Microstudies of the Public Order (London: Penguin, 1972), 415.

[10]. See, for example, Frederick W. Hickling and Gerard Hutchinson, ‘Caribbean Contributions to Contemporary Psychiatric Psychopathology’, West Indies Medical Journal, 61(4), 2012, 442–6. 

[11]. Daniel Nehring and Dylan Kerrigan, Therapeutic Worlds: Popular Psychology and the Sociocultural Organisation of Intimate Life (London: Routledge, 2019), 29.

[12]. ‘Mental Health in Guyana’s Prisons: A Direct Legacy of the Country’s Colonial History?’, Stabroek News, 16 April 2021.

[13]. Guyana Prison Service, 2020 Annual Report (Georgetown: Guyana Prison Service, 2021), 1, 5.

[14]. See ‘Offender’s Mental Health Prior to Incarceration must be Assessed’, Guyana Chronicle, 28 August 2021.

[15]. Jerry Tew, ‘Recovery Capital: What Enables a Sustainable Recovery from Mental Health Difficulties?’, European Journal of Social Work, 16(3), 2012, 360. See also Jerry Tew et al., ‘Social Factors and Recovery from Mental Health Difficulties: A Review of the Evidence’, British Journal of Social Work, 42, April 2011, 443–60.

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Contemporary Reflections

By Di Levine

The MNS Guyana team has recently undertaken some analysis particularly focused on ‘juvenile’ experiences of prisons in Guyana between 1834 to the present (Warren et al. 2021). This blog post takes a moment to reflect on what our analysis might mean for how we work with children and young people right now.


Of course, none of the extensive work done with, for, and to, children and young people in contemporary times happens in a vacuum; rather it is rooted in the socio-cultural, political, and geographical frameworks and practices of the past. Here, I take a brief look at three key themes emerging from the team’s analysis through the lens of contemporary understandings of childhood and adolescence. I close with an invitation to build new conceptual frameworks for child and youth justice.


Theme 1: Representations and (re)presentations of childhood and youth
The ways in which childhood and adolescence are viewed and understood in any society has direct consequential relationships to the ways in which they are treated, not least in the justice system. Until relatively recently, children’s needs, presences and voices in both colonial and postcolonial justice contexts have been significantly under-represented (Ame, 2018) or dominated by the question of what is considered ‘juvenile’ (Abrams et al., 2018).


As the team discuss in their article (Warren et al. 2021), this lack of representation has also been present in their analysis of the youth incarceration context in Guyana. Pre-‘66 concerns surrounded ‘lawlessness’ amongst boys, and ‘immorality’ amongst girls, crucially and inextricably linked to harmful stereotypes regarding family formation (e.g. illegitimacy) and guidance, particularly towards the Afro-Creole population. Post-’66 they have found a broader consideration of ‘youth’ and ‘delinquency’ placed in the context of wider systemic change. Both of these trends reflect wider colonial and postcolonial representations of childhood and youth (Moruzi et al., 2019), and offer little surprise. What is surprising – and speaks to the problematic, deep embedding of colonial perceptions and practices on those colonised – is how little the processes of independence triggered debate in the justice system around opportunities to (re)present childhood and adolescence in ways that were rooted in local socio-cultural understandings of these life stages (e.g. Creole, Indigenous, African or Indian, or complex combinations of these).


I propose then, that the key learning from this theme for contemporary scholars of childhood and adolescence is the need to surface the myriad conceptualisations of these phases of the lifecourse in Guyana, in the same way that we would approach the intersectional challenges of any sub-group in a population, if we are to progress youth incarceration and justice systems that are both sustainable and effective into the future. We need to move from representations of childhood and adolescence, to (re)presentations of these life stages.


Theme 2: Deficit models and compound impact
The ‘deficit model’ linking aggression in childhood (and associated family risk factors) with later delinquency has dominated a significant proportion of the empirical literature and as the team show in their article (Warren et al., 2021) certainly speaks to the perceptions of both colonial and postcolonial administrators about child, parent and family relationships in Guyana. Recent research, however, suggests that both the directionality and nature of this model is incomplete, and that the deficit model may not be universally applicable (Renouf et al., 2010). Rather, there are multiple pathways through which aggressive behaviour may evolve (Hawley, 2014; Jambon et al., 2019).


There is a further challenge offered by the use of a deficit model in the Guyanese context: close to 90% of the evidence about childhood and adolescence is built on research in ‘high income’ (Minority World) countries (Blum & Boyden, 2018). The relevance of deficit models of delinquency to the Guyanese context is therefore highly questionable, compounded by the highly problematic stereotypes we have seen represented in archives and records, and demonstrated in Queenela Cameron’s recent study on the New Opportunity Corp (NOC) facility in Onderneeming (Cameron, 2019).


Contemporary evidence suggests that there are some aspects of youth development specifically that are universal. For example, the powerful neurological drive during adolescence leading to heightened effects of peer influences on perception of risk, reasoning surrounding risk, and risk-taking, and hypersensitivity to social exclusion (Foulkes & Blakemore, 2018). The team therefore saw recurring discussion of the problems of ‘gang’ cultures in their analysis, and the administrative urge to channel these neurobiological drivers into national service or corps in post-independence Guyana.
However, while there are characteristics of childhood and adolescence that are observed across cultures and histories (e.g. Blakemore, 2019), system-level interactions (e.g. between child/youth and health, education or indeed justice) can often be context-specific. Arguably the concatenation of these two circumstances the team has witnessed in archives and records, has contributed to the lack of sustained change in the youth incarceration system both in Guyana and elsewhere over long periods of time.


Theme 3: Work, educational reform and rehabilitation
The perceived close relationship between ‘work’ and ‘rehabilitation’ is a recurrent theme in our analysis since the colonial period. While much has been written on the definition and nature of child ‘work’ and ‘labour’ (e.g. Van Daalen & Mabillard, 2019; Rahikainen, 2017; Adonteng-Kissi, 2018), because child and youth voices are so absent from the evidence available to us in Guyana within the prison system, it is difficult build a picture of what aspects of this work could be considered rehabilitative, or even restorative, in the longer term. We cannot judge whether the highly-gendered educational opportunities afforded young Guyanese were sufficient to enable them to build a life for themselves beyond institutions, were barriers or facilitators of what limited social mobility might be available to them during these periods, or whether this work impacted on recidivism. The study by Cameron (Cameron, 2019) represents an initial step towards building a contemporary picture that centres the lived experience of young, incarcerated people now, which will provide new foundations for future scholarship.


Finally, we have reached the point where we understand that children and youth people are progressing through crucial periods of human development. This understanding enables us to reflect on what it means to ‘become’ an adult, and therefore what is means to be human. Significant physiological and psychosocial change (e.g. Sawyer et al., 2018), associated changes in attitudinal and behavioural appetites, influences from socio-cultural constructs, all point to complex multisystems of anthropometric, environmental and psychosocial change in which a young person navigating the justice system operates. The team’s analysis invites scholars to begin to conceptualise these multiple, interconnected systems (Theron & Ungar, 2020), some universal, some highly contextualised, all rooted on the past, in order to build more transformative pathways (Case & Hampson, 2019) in youth incarceration and justice system for Guyana’s future.

Dr Diane Levine is Deputy Director of the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies.


(Warren et al. 2021) Warren, K., Moss, K., Kerrigan, D., Ayres, T., Anderson, A., Cameron, Q., Confronting Silences Haunting Guyana’s Juvenile Justice System, Caribbean Journal of Criminology, Vol 3:1 (2021), ISSN: 0799-3897, pp. 10-39.

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Mental Health and Covid-19 Protocols in Guyana’s Prisons

By Queenela Cameron

Interviews conducted at the Georgetown and Lusignan prisons in 2019 as part of a collaborative research on the topic of “Mental, Neurological and Substance Abuse disorders in Guyana’s Jails – 1825 to the Present Day” revealed that a number of mental health challenges (diagnosed and undiagnosed) are experienced by both prisoners and prison staff, with depression seeming to be the dominant one. Depression in the context of Guyana’s prisons, is exacerbated by several factors; limited recreational activities, poor or limited work and education rehabilitation programmes, and an absence of, or limited contact with family members to name a few.

Image: Lusignan Prison 2019, Professor Martin Halliwell, University of Leicester

The Covid-19 pandemic and the measures taken (from March 2020 to early January of this year) to prevent and manage its spread in the prison environment, played additional roles in further alienating prisoners from the already limited activities which aim to contribute to their rehabilitation. It stands to reason, that an absence/suspension of these activities and programs (for approximately two years) as well as the pandemic itself, likely intensified feelings of stress and depression amongst prisoners.  Prison staff who too were subjected to strict Covid-19 guidelines including prolonged periods of confinement in the prison environment likely experienced increased levels of stress on their mental well-being.

Among the measures taken was the suspension of all religious activities and training programs within the prison. One of the key findings unearthed during the interviews conducted in 2019, revealed that religion is one of the biggest coping mechanisms utilized by prisoners, as attending religious services gives them comfort and relieves feelings of stress, depression and hopelessness. These findings are not unique to Guyana’s prison environment, as several studies conducted in other jurisdictions point to the effectiveness of religion in positively impacting the mental health of prisoners. Bradshaw and Ellison 2010, and Ellison et al, 2008 for instance, note that “Participation in religious activities can impact inmate mental health by promoting social support. Attendance at religious services has consistently been shown to be protective against mental distress.” 

The suspension of this vital stress-reliever and depression-combatant implies that many prisoners were likely to become withdrawn, easily agitated, disruptive, fight amongst themselves, experience appetite loss, and harbour escape and/or suicidal thoughts.

Given that the number of daily Covid-19 positive cases, both outside of and inside of the prison contexts of Guyana has drastically reduced from its peak of 1,558 on January 17 of this year to 5 cases as at March 25, 2022 (WHO), and also given that there is already inadequate mental help support in the form of counselling and therapy for convicted prisoners and that no such service exists for prisoners on remand, it is recommended that religious activities should be resumed, albeit in the contexts of social-distancing, sanitizing and mask-wearing guidelines. Conscious of the limited spacing available for religious worship due to massive overcrowding, small groups could be accommodated at various intervals in order to fulfil the right of prisoners to religious engagements which is vital to prisoners’ mental well-being as well as their rehabilitation.

With respect to training activities, those too were suspended for approximately two-years. However, between January 12 and 15 of this year, all of the Guyana dailies and Newscasts reported that 861 prisoners housed at the various prisons graduated in what is being referred to as “ground-breaking” training courses offered at the various prisons. The programs, prison officials’ note, aim to prepare inmates for life outside of the prison and to assist with their reintegration into society. The inmates had the opportunity to participate in a number of different training areas such as entrepreneurship, anger management, carpentry and joinery, family reconciliation, tailoring, culinary arts, art and craft, cosmetology, barbering, crops husbandry and veterinary sciences. The courses were extended to all prisoners including those on remand and also those who were convicted with several high-profile and special watch inmates taking the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves with the courses. (HGP Nightly News. January 15, 2022). Further, the “Fresh-start” program launched just last month by the Guyana Prison Service with similar programs and more, are all aimed at preparing prisoners for productive life outside of prison. (Stabroek News. February 18, 2022)

These programs must be commended for their role in fostering prisoners’ rehabilitation and likely reducing rates of recidivism as “the impact of education goes well beyond the walls of the prisons themselves, extending into the home communities of the incarcerated.” (North Western University Prison Education Program). Their importance in assisting the mental health of prisoners whose time would have been more than likely spent on unproductive activities which contribute to depression, anxiety, stress and other mental ailments cannot be overstated. Further, the inclusion of these programs to prisoners on remand must also be applauded for its progressiveness given that the current laws do not extend those privileges to remand prisoners, many of whom sometimes spend several idle years behind bars before sentencing or release.

Another of the measures taken was the suspension of the (external) work rehabilitation program. Prior to the pandemic, some prisoners were able to capitalize on work rehabilitation programs which not only helped in the provision of financial resources for them to supplement their prison-provided supplies, but also contributed to their families’ upkeep, occupied their time, helped provide meaning in their lives by providing them with something to focus on, and prepared them for post-prison productive life. North Western University Prison Education Program notes that work rehabilitation aids in preparing prisoners for life outside of prison as “reentry is far smoother and more successful for those who took classes in prison, especially insofar as gainful employment is one of the defining features of successful reentry.” The suspension of this privilege likely impacted the mental health of prisoners in a negative way.  Existing literature suggests that “inmate boredom caused by the lack of work and absence of recreational activities could be linked to depression and aggressive behavior.” (Tartoro and Leaster, 2009). Such behaviors could spread among the prison population thereby leading to prison riots, fires etc., all of which could make the work more challenging for an already thinly-stretched and over-worked prison staff.

The suspension of family visits was another measure implemented to prevent and manage the Covid-19 pandemic in Guyana’s prison setting. During the interview sessions with prisoners in 2019, many bemoaned the lack of/limited visits form their family members, while others were in praise for supportive family members who visit often and supplement their supplies. The complete removal of this social support privilege (though replaced by electronic means using the “Google Hangouts app” and/or telephone) likely increased feelings of depression and other mental health issues amongst prisoners. De. Claire Dixon, 2015 notes that “Visits help offenders to maintain contact with the outside world, promoting successful reintegration back into society and reducing recidivism. This scarcity of social support might make adjustment to prison more difficult, risking the use of maladaptive coping strategies.”

A further measure taken was the suspension of actual (face-to-face) court hearings, and the establishment of virtual courtrooms. While this measure must be lauded for its role in respecting the rights of prisoners to a trial within a reasonable time period as well as the possible reduction of time spent on remand, the positive mental-health benefits of actually leaving the confines of the prison environment for a trip (however temporary), to be in a setting with non-prisoners, to perhaps have a moment to socially interact with family members and their attorney, cannot be ignored.

While most of these measures impacted prisoners, their impact on the mental-health of prison staff cannot be ignored. Prison Officers were already in-line due to the prolonged March 2020 elections and they were forced to remain in-line (for time frames as long as two weeks) as a precaution against bringing the virus into the prison environment.  Devoid of the vital social interaction of family, being forced to work long hours in an overcrowded setting in the face of a massive human resource deficit, fearful of contracting a deadly virus in the contexts of agitated, violent, dangerous and scared prisoners are all factors which likely intensified the stress levels of prison staff.

It should be recalled that a number of undiagnosed prisoners, specifically those on remand, complained of experiencing bouts of depression and anxiety as a result of their incarceration. They also bemoaned the absence of competent mental health personnel on whom they could unburden themselves. Similar sentiments were expressed by officers and other prison staff who, like most prisoners, also use religion as a coping mechanism.

In light of the foregoing, and in the context of the almost- completed “modern” prison and proposed new prison headquarters at Lusignan, it is hoped that this facility would be equipped with a modern mental health facility and staffed by competent metal-health personnel, including therapists and counselors to assist prisoners (including remand prisoners who do not benefit from existing arrangements) and prison staff.

Such facility would greatly augment prisoners’ rehabilitation, prepare them for life outside of prison and ultimately reduce the rates of recidivism. For Prisons Officers and other staff, working in both one-on-one and group sessions with a therapist could help them cope with the challenges associated with a highly stressful, time-consuming, low-paying, and sometimes under-valued profession.

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Research during Covid: The three Rs (Reflexivity, Resilience and Rum)

By Members of the Research Team

Research never goes to plan. As academics, we all know this. It is also a fact we constantly share with our students as an expected part of academic research. Whether it is a failure to gain access, or find enough people willing to participate, we all face research challenges. Like most things however, Covid has added a new set of challenges to academic research (as well as opening up new opportunities), which our research team recently faced on a trip to collect data in Guyana. This reminded us all about the importance of the three Rs – Reflexivity, Resilience and Rum (rum is used to emphasise the importance of relaxation and researcher self-care as well as the importance of looking after each other when out in the field, something that is to commonly forgotten about in research). Subsequently, this blog outlines how Covid recently impacted upon our data collection plans and how we, the team of three (the three musketeers), responded to the challenges they faced, illustrating the importance not only of the team – its members, relationship, reflexivity, and resilience – but also of building the networks of support that became an invaluable source of help on this trip. Although often over-looked, networks of support – academic as well as practitioner – are invaluable as we travel the globe in person or virtually undertaking research and delivering research papers at conferences.

Covid-19: The Challenges

We have all had to face new challenges arising from the global Covid pandemic, and this includes research. The ever-changing requirements for travel alone can be a minefield especially when multiple destinations are involved. Do you need a PCR test? A lateral flow? A vaccine record? Although the team joked about the possibilities of Covid negatively affecting this research trip as we completed the usual research risk assessment form, we did not for one minute think that this would become our reality. As we navigated the various government requirements for travel to Guyana, and as transit passengers (currently there is no direct flight from London to Georgetown), we quickly became all too familiar with the challenges when these documents expire. Three days prior to travel our connecting flight was cancelled; due primarily to the knock-on effects of Covid the carrier was required to consolidate some of its existing flights. This delay in being able to fly to our final destination meant that our existing Covid PCR tests (taken in the UK before departure) became invalid while we were in transit. As a result, two hours before we were due to leave for the airport, we had to retest, and then found ourselves faced with the unenviable decision of whether to abandon the research trip as one of us tested positive. Despite the UK being only days away from dropping all restrictions the rules of quarantine in our transit destination, as in many areas of the Caribbean, remained in full force. After a frantic hour of rearranging hotel rooms, contacting our colleagues, updating the insurance provider, and ensuring the Covid patient had the basic necessities for a possible ten-day stay in isolation, the remaining two members of the team apprehensively continued on with the trip.

Reflexivity

We reflect on a daily basis in both our personal and professional lives, and the importance of being reflexive when undertaking research is well documented.  It facilitates self-awareness and allows researchers to respond to unexpected challenges and situations in appropriate and ethical ways. It also allows researchers to improve and build on instances of good practice as well as to learn from their mistakes. Thanks to Covid we had to revisit and alter our itinerary for the trip. This was mainly owing to the fact that as a team we were now lacking in the expertise required for certain elements of data collection, namely the interviewing of prisoners and a focus group with their families. The added scrutiny that this placed on our planned activities ensured that we worked together, albeit remotely, to create a workable plan. As a result, two of the most invaluable research tools on this trip quickly became Zoom and WhatsApp, as we adapted to the circumstances to ensure the trip was a success. This technology enabled us to further refine our research questions and aims as we prepared for the interviews with our colleague in isolation. Due to the circumstances, we also made the decision to employ a local researcher with experience of working with prisoners and their families. In addition to helping with the language barrier (many speak a variation of English known as Guyanese Creole) this also had the unexpected benefit of producing more in-depth data as the prisoners connected with the interviewer over their shared experiences of living in the same country. Furthermore, where possible one of our key activities – a session in which we co-created a new tool that will enable the Guyana Prison Service to gauge the experiences of prisoners and officers – was moved to an online session. This had the added benefit of enabling officers, and members of our team, from a wider geographical area to take part. This reflexivity not only ensured we were able to successfully carry out our designated activities, it also strengthened our relationships with our partners, both in Guyana and the UK, as we worked together to overcome difficulties.

Resilience 

Although not a fan of the word resilience – which seems to have become a contemporary buzz word – it best describes the reaction of the team members to the situation they found themselves in during this research trip. Instead of letting it get them down they did their best to make the best out of a bad situation (thanks to being reflective), which actually resulted not only in a very productive data collection trip, but also one that contained some genuine moments of comradery, good humour and bursts of hysterical laughter despite the adverse and at times disappointing situation that faced us. As Charles Darwin exclaimed/outlined: ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change’. Sentiments that stand true for the recent predicament we, the research team, found themselves in and how we chose to respond to it.

We had always planned for Covid, in that we decided that three persons would go on this trip, so that in the event of sickness and isolation the others could complete the research activities. Despite our pact that if one of us tested positive for Covid then the team would carry on without them, like many plans in life, you never really expect them to happen so, the reality and its accompanying shock was somewhat overwhelming and definitely unexpected. In fact, the first 5 minutes after the initial news of the positive test was spent asking the medical team if they were joking, as is often the way in the Caribbean. It was however no joke. One of us had tested positive and was going to have to stay behind in transit and in quarantine in a different country on their own, while the remaining two went on to Guyana. This is when true teamwork and collegiality really come into play as everyone (bar the infected who had to stay outside) pulled together to rectify/address the situation in the 2-hour window before everyone was due to fly. A team member in the UK liaised with our travel agent. We called and discussed the situation with our partners, and later on the British High Commission in Guyana, with whom we have built excellent working relationship over the past few years.

Once the initial shock of one of us testing positive for Covid had worn off the team revisited their itinerary and data collection plans for the forthcoming week to ensure everyone was still involved where practically possible/needed. Despite the initial disappointment, and the frustration of not being able to go and collect data in Guyana, the Covid patient endeavoured to come up with an exit plan until they heard from the Ministry of Health. The idea was to rest up, clear the virus and follow the team on after 5-days. However, this was not to be. Instead, the Ministry made it quite clear that the minimum isolation period was 10-days, although the patient was given a hotline number to call. After a frustrating day with 7-hours spent just redialling but being unable to get through on the telephone number provided by the Ministry of Health, the Covid patient also explored other avenues of help/support to ascertain the situation. It was at this point that the importance of networks was emphasised: the team was in touch with the High Commission of Guyana, and it was willing to help. Once the Covid patient knew that they were quarantined for 10-days and the research team had created a new itinerary for the trip, it was easy to plan their time and make the best use of the situation both to recover but also to catch up on some of the background project reading, reading the interview transcripts and coding frames as well as numerous other tasks that often get postponed.

The team debriefed every morning and/ or evening where practicably possible not only to catch up on the day’s progress but also to relax, and jolly each other along. The daily debriefs with their colleagues in Guyana, including meetings where the Covid patient Zoomed in, also helped to ensure that they felt part of the project and part of the team. It also kept them busy and helped the time to pass quickly, with some days feeling quite busy despite not leaving the hotel room. We had a job to do, and Covid was not going to stop us. We just had to get on with it.

Rum

Undertaking research in the Caribbean is challenging. Although, Guyana is often seen by many as a desirable research location, many often fail to consider the subject matter of our project, the political/cultural sensitivities, and the fact that despite being a desirable destination, our time is often spent in old colonial prisons – some of which have been deemed to violate the United Nations Minimum Standards for the treatment of prisoners – talking to prisoners, staff, communities and families about often upsetting and traumatic experiences, which the research team then have to process and deal with. It is in this context that the importance of self-care and looking after each other comes into play. Although there are more formal channels of support offered to everyone working on the project, there are also informal support practices that have been an integral part of this research project, which is also reflected in the relationship of the team.

The research team on this project are very close, familial like even – but without much of the negativity associated with families. We all genuinely support each other. There are no egos. There is no competition. Instead, there is clear leadership, collegiality and care. Whether it is coffee and cake or catching up over a meal, regular debriefs, relaxation and humour have always been an important part of the team’s R and R, emphasising the importance of relaxation and researcher self-care as well as the importance of looking after each other when out in the field, something that is to commonly forgotten about in research. It was this which got us through what one of the researchers described as the most difficult situation in their 25-year career. With pride, we returned to the UK together, having completed all our planned activities and with our research team stronger than ever before.

Acknowledgements: The Covid patient would like to thank their two travel/research companions, as well as the team in Guyana, and everyone that looked after them, especially the High Commission in Georgetown in Guyana, and the Chief Medical Officer of the transit country, who went above and beyond in their support.

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Resisting Carceral Confinement in Guyana: Legacies of a Colonial State

Kellie Moss & Kristy Warren

In July of 2017, a fire destroyed the majority of the buildings that stood in the compound of the Georgetown Prison in Guyana’s capital. Four prisoners escaped and one warden was killed. Over 1000 people were imprisoned at the time in a space meant to hold less than 600 people. Just over a year earlier, in March 2016, 17 prisoners died and eight were injured after a fire spread in the Capital A Block of the prison. The setting of this fire arose out of prisoner’s frustration with structural deficiencies within the prison which included overcrowding, poor sanitation, and an infestation of pests. Also of relevance was that the overcrowding was caused in large part by the length of time individuals were being held on remand before trial. However, these events did not occur in a vacuum. The issues of overcrowding and the numbers of prisoners being held on remand for extended periods of time have been linked to varying forms of prisoner resistance since British rule.

Historically, prisons in British Guiana were used by colonial administrators to control and confine the labouring population, namely the formerly enslaved and indentured immigrants, within the plantation society. As a result, those of African and Asian descent were disproportionately policed and punished to deter others from engaging in ‘criminal’ activities. Most notably this occurred for breaches of contract and misdemeanours under the immigration ordinance. Whilst some prisoners adapted to the substandard living conditions and overtly punitive environment of the prison system, many sought to test these institutional practices. Critically, therefore, prisons quickly became sites of resistance and challenge for the labouring population as they attempted to alter their legal, social, and political situations.


Since the mid-nineteenth century, government inquiries and the reports of colonial authorities have urged change in the provision of the colony’s prison system, citing concerns disturbingly similar to those identified by the Commissions of Enquiry into the 2016 and 2017 fires. This included, among others, poor infrastructure, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions. As in recent years inquiries into these concerns were often a direct response to violent, every day, or official forms of prisoner’s resistance.


Due to the limited number of warders the prison system was often reliant on the compliance of prisoners to adhere to rules and regulations rather than force. As a result, when the prisoners felt powerless, they would often resort to uprisings as a way to challenge the system. Habitual offenders frequently took advantage of the lack of trained warders required to maintain discipline with the creation of gangs that threatened to overwhelm the balance of control. These groups included a range of differing classes, such as first offenders, juveniles, and those awaiting trial. Whilst attempts were made in the 1930s to alter certain aspects of the prison system, such as the separation of different classes of prisoners, these efforts were ultimately hampered due to budget constraints, and the need to manage and discipline the prison population. A lack of space, and facilities within Guyana’s prison system mean that those on remand continue to be held in close association with those imprisoned for committing violent crimes.


Rum, cannabis, and opium provided an escape from the hardships of labouring on plantations throughout much of the nineteenth century. And, having become firmly established within the culture of the labouring class the increased legislation introduced around the turn of the twentieth century unsurprisingly led to a significant rise in this form of resistance both inside and outside the prison walls. For many prisoners, substance use provides an escape from the anxieties of being imprisoned. Thus, unlike uprisings that involve acts of violence, most acts of resistance have involved everyday negotiations that have taken place between the prison population and the staff. This has included the consumption and trade of illicit substances, such as alcohol and drugs, the latter of which has mostly been trafficked by the prison staff for financial gain. Recently, much has been done to improve fencing, with the introduction of night-time surveillance, to help stem attempts by friends and family to throw contraband over the walls.


Hence, it can be seen that the use of alcohol and drugs within the prison is a trend that has continued into the twenty first century. Whilst the introduction of technology has led to a wider range of contraband in recent years (cell phones and sim cards), alcohol, and drugs continue to play an important role in helping to relieve the strictures of incarceration. In particular, cannabis remains a key drug within the prisons in connection to both escapism and resistance. Additionally, images and videos of participation in other illegal or banned activities, such as human ‘dog fights’, bring attention to the conditions in the prison system, both physical (the overcrowding) and mental (frustration and boredom).


As Guyana’s prison system continues to attract media attention and the concern of prison reform and human rights organisations (United Nations), history can be drawn on to highlight continuities in terms of the challenges of managing large numbers of prisoners with limited means. Despite some temporary successes for the prison population during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, resistance often led to additional or continued oppression. Yet, such acts of resistance continue. Since independence, a lack of resources and poor infrastructure has meant that the several commissions of enquiry have not resulted in systemic change. Further uprisings occurred in the summer of 2020 in response to continued deplorable conditions and worries that COVID-19 was spreading in the prison. It also provides a final sobering conclusion that little has changed in terms of the high rate of imprisonment in Guyana and the detrimental effects the system has had since the beginning of British rule in 1814.

The authors would like to thank Mellissa Ifill for her comments/feedback on an earlier draft of this blog.

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Evaluation in a post-colonial context

By Diane Levine

In their 2020 chapter “The South against the destroying machine”, Lara Hofner takes an interdisciplinary approach to reflecting on the social realities of the Minority World, the ways in which they are hegemonic and violent, and the contrasting social realities of the Majority World,  considered ‘oppressed’ (see Hofner in Baumann & Bultmann, 2020). In this blog post I reflect on the challenges of evaluating the MNS Disorders in Guyana’s Jails project as we saw them at the outset, then share some of the key messages emerging from the mid-point evaluation, and consider some of the challenges we will face in the remainder of the project in ensuring evaluation does not become part of the “destroying machine”. [Note: I do not sit directly within the research team, which I hope has given me some small sense of distance and objectivity in delivering evaluative activity.]

What was

At the project launch stage the team’s planned evaluation and impact activities were founded on some shared key principles:

  1. We collaborate and align our efforts for the benefit of the project as a whole wherever possible,
  2. We ensure equity of access to data, including by considering gender, socio-economic and socio-cultural dimensions to our findings.
  3. Our research emerges from meaningful understandings of the complex environments in which we operate.
  4. We promote decolonising methods and perspectives.
  5. We learn continuously by analysing and reflecting on the specific and changing circumstances in which we operate.
  6. We harmonize with our colleagues outside the academy, committing to co-ordinating our efforts with others in the same space on their advice. 

The challenge ahead was not underestimated by team members. Impact and evaluation have already been problematized widely in the academy (e.g. Aguinis et al, 2014). With particular reference to this project were conceptualisations of impact that rely wholly on ideas of rationality and control that provide an unfortunately fantastical security in a context that does not in reality allow for non-linear ‘contradiction, complexity, or paradox’ (e.g. Shahjahan & Wagner, 2018, p.g.3). We all saw that this formulation made an incontrovertible link between the rational and the conqueror, and brought us dangerously into colonial practice: in this framing everything must be manageable, observable, knowable, and measurable, as the team sought to identify causal linkages between intersectional complexities and ‘impactful’ intervention.

As was expected across the funding landscape at the time (2018/19), the team intended to produce an evolutionary logical framework, and emergent classical Theory of Change goals that would: i) model pathways to impact, explaining the potential connection between activity, output, outcome, and impact, ii) provide rationales on how implemented activities and inputs are likely to lead to our desired outcomes, and iii) make assumptions and constraints explicit. The original logframe looked something like this:

Attempts to conceptualise impact in the context of a decolonial imperative have aimed to demonstrate multi-stratified perspectives of reality (e.g. Izutsu, 2008), and alternative ways of knowing that we cannot normally see through the common impact lenses of, say, policy citation (see Śūnyatā, as explicated in Shahjahan & Wagner, 2018). Change that might arise from our research activities as viewed through Śūnyatā’s lens is not change in itself. Rather, change depend for existence on everything else.

We realised that we would need to learn the lessons being taught to us by the limits and failures of tools such as logical frameworks and Theories of Change, whilst acknowledging our commitments to our funders, colleagues’ careers, institutional progression, and our partners. Following their first fieldtrip (March 2019) the team began to ask themselves some difficult questions:

  • Can we understand and evaluate in a pluriversal way that surfaces the interconnectedness between us all in the Guyanese context?
  • Can we accept the discomfort that our work may not ‘make a difference’ in the ways we conceptualise ‘difference-making’?

Alongside finding ways of addressing these questions, the team realised that parallel systems might need to be run for capturing the pragmatic requirements of funders and institutions. They wanted to formulate these new ways of evaluating and knowing without sacrificing their integrity. This seemed to me an excellent position from which to begin my observation (and learning) journey.

What is now

One of the parallel systems to which we had committed was a mid-point evaluation. Our original conceptualisation was of something that would be delivered in Guyana, with Guyanese stakeholders. Sadly, in March 2020 we had to rapidly re-formulate our approach with the onset of Covid-19. Fieldwork, workshops, focus groups and consultation would no longer be possible in the way we had envisaged. Not only that, but uncertainty within the Guyanese socio-political context, and associated significant workloads for everyone, meant that we could not in fairness ask people to give up their time for long virtual workshops.

In the interests of pragmatism we opted for a light touch mid-point evaluation comprising a content analysis of all meeting minutes to summer 2020, 1:1 interviews of all team members willing to speak, and a summary that would then be reflected to our Advisory Board for comment, critique, and critical friendship. Six key themes emerged.

What will be?

So what about next steps? Well, there are some practical things we need to do. For example, for large scale projects, we need to begin to consider costing/building in professional support for those gathering data in the field (including in archives), or possible training modules available to all teams in managing emotional responses to this kind of high-stakes work.

But the significant, intersectional task ahead for evaluation will be to continue to recognise that “evaluation is unavoidably and simultaneously in dialog with the prevailing contexts of colonization and decolonization vis-à-vis the location and moment in which it occurs” (Marama Cavino, 2013). We need to build a culturally-meaningful, Caribbean-aligned, model of evaluation that meets Guyanese needs, as well as our original commitments. Watch this space!

Dr Diane Levine is the Deputy Director and Manager of the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Leicester.

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Guyana’s Prison Officers: A Stressful and Dangerous Job

By Tammy Ayres

Guyana’s prisons have been described as ‘potentially life-threatening’ and ‘not  fit  for human  habitation’. These life-threatening conditions can be attributed to systemic and historically derived deficiencies that continue to plague Guyana’s Prison Service (GPS) today. These include overcrowding, poor infrastructure, violence, physical abuse and unsanitary conditions, all of which have a detrimental impact on the staff and prisoners that live and work there. Prison officers are not only detrimentally impacted by the prison environment and its decaying infrastructure (e.g., which induces psychological distress, depression, burnout, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use, violence, corruption, disorder, absenteeism and a high staff turnover) but their responsibilities often entail ‘physical exertion and mental anxiety’. This helps to explain why the international evidence shows prison officers are at a greater risk of mental ill-health than other occupational groups. In fact, being a prison officer is a dangerous and stressful job that involves daily intimidation and on occasion, actual physical violence. Nowhere is this truer than in Guyana. While the experience of prisoners in Guyana has been captured elsewhere (see Cameron, 2020; Sarsfield and Bergman, 2017), this blog focuses on the frequently forgotten prison staff who work across Guyana’s five prisons; three of which are colonial era prisons that were constructed and operated according to the needs of the colony (see Anderson et al. 2020); colonial legacies that are still evident today.

The post-colonial prison is shaped – haunted – by the colonial past and this is true for prison officers as well as the regimes, infrastructure and policies. Staff played a key role in the colonial prison as they were expected to use ‘their moral influence to encourage good behaviour’, provide educational classes and enforce labour, which often led to guards using ‘cart whips and cat o’ nine tails’ on prisoners to ensure compliance and productivity. The cruelty and mistreatment of prisoners by staff that plagued the colonial prison was attributable to a lack of regulation, which had created ‘a regime of fear and cruelty’ in some of Guyana’s jails. Although Regulations were finally introduced in the late 1800s outlining the duties of prison officers, which were implemented in line with British practices (e.g., CO 111/67, CO 116/207 and CO 111/384), it did not stop these abuses. Abuses that have not only been documented in the past but as the ensuing discussion will show, are still prevalent in Guyana’s prison service today.

The lack of penological resources characteristic of the contemporary Guyanese prison were also prevalent in the 1800s; prison guards were difficult to recruit, while overcrowding and poor conditions meant that many prison officers ‘left employment, or retired early, due to stress and overwork’. Historical records show that even the medical officers – employed to care for prisoners – were responsible for the death of inmates, as their role often revolved  ‘around diagnosis and discipline rather than treatment and care’. In fact, the decaying infrastructure and overcrowding has  a negative impact on staff and prisoners today as well as in the past: ‘J.  Brumel  noted  in  1875, that incarceration  caused  terror  to  convicts,  but  also had  a  depressing influence on officers’ and their families, ‘who often lived inside prison compounds’. This remains the case today, with many prison officers and their families living in close proximity to the prisons in which they work, particularly at Mazaruni where officer’s families live on the prison complex, which is only accessible via boat (see pictures below). 

Her Majesty’s Penal Service was changed to Guyana’s Prison Service in 1957 and was established by the Prison  Act  No.  26. Guyana’s Prison Service (GPS) aims ‘to provide a secure environment for Staff and Offenders’ and has just over 500 staff working in the service – 58% are men and 42% are women (GPS, 2017) – with the Director of Prisons having overall responsibility for all of the prisons in Guyana, while the Deputy Director holds responsibility for Operations. As nearly half of all GPS staff ‘are women and civilian staff who do not secure the majority of male prisoners’ there is a shortage of staff for the male estate – about 295 male prison personnel for around 2,074 male prisoners that comprise 96% of Guyana’s prison population – that results in a low staff to prisoner ratio, which has had ‘a significant impact on the personal security of inmates and guards alike’. Feelings of safety and security are integral to rehabilitation and building healthy prisons. Feeling safe is also the most important determinant of distress among prisoners and staff, illustrating that both safety and security are important issues that need to be addressed since the majority of prisoners (89%) felt less safe in prison than anywhere else they had lived (Sarsfield and Bergman, 2017). In fact, safety and security are basic human needs, which if unsatisfied can actually exacerbate levels of violence, disorder and rule-breaking in prison (see Hoke and Demory, 2014).  Although prisons have a dual role of public protection alongside the rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners, it has been unable to adequately fulfil either since its inception (see Ifill, 2019) as many of the problems facing GPS today, were also prevalent in the past.


A Warder at HMPS, The Illustrated London News, 1888.

The contemporary prison service in Guyana is plagued by the same problems evident in the colonial prison, which according to the Director of Prisons (2020) rests on ‘the absence of physical infrastructure and human resource’. In fact, the physical infrastructure remains the same as in colonial times, particularly in the colonial era prisons that have not really changed. Internationally, it is well documented that the prison environment (conditions and culture) can adversely affect staff and prisoners, particularly prisons described as ‘not  fit  for human  habitation’ like those in Guyana. Such conditions also feed into and influence the way staff see and treat prisoners detained in these prisons. Research from the global north has continually shown that ‘the routine and bureaucratic denial of humanity in prison and the tendency to construct prisoners as the other ‘them’ creates spaces where inhumane treatment may occur…making brutality possible, even inevitable’ (Crawley, 2004). The use of violence by staff against inmates, the depersonalisation of prisoners (prisoners are merely bodies to be counted) and staff detachment are also well-documented techniques implemented by prison officers to cope with their job, which can also precipitate corruption.  In fact, the prison environment, its culture and the high concentration of criminals in confined spaces ‘not only makes those  deprived  of  their  liberty  prone  to  instigating  corruption;  it  may  equally  serve  as  a  catalyst  for  corrupt  practices  and  abuse  among  prison  service  officers,  particularly  if  coupled  with  a  lack  of  accountability  and  oversight’ (UNODC, 2017). Thus, safety and security are also compromised by ‘widespread corruption, mismanagement, bribery, favouritism and dishonesty in the GPS’ as the correlation between levels of corruption and ill-treatment in prisons globally is well documented (see UNODC, 2017). Although incidents of violence and corruption are sporadic in GPS, they still occur. Prison officers often have fewer qualifications, less training, low morale, low salaries, fewer career opportunities and are often held in lower regard than other officials leaving them susceptible to corruption (Ifill, 2019; UNODC, 2017). This has led to calls to increase the pay of prison officers in Guyana to compensate for the daily risks they face and in attempt to eliminate corruption.

Corruption occurs on a continuum and can vary from turning a blind eye to contraband in prison to aiding escapes and undertaking financial misdemeanours. Although levels of corruption vary across Guyana’s prisons, levels of corruption have been described as concerning, with ‘High-Levels of Corruption’ being evident at the overcrowded and heavily criticised Lusignan prison (also described as ‘not  fit  for human  habitation’). In fact, Minister Benn said, ‘we are losing more prison officers than we are getting due to corrupt practices.’ In Guyana in 2016, two hundred and thirty-nine prison officers – just under half of all officers (47%) employed by GPS – were charged and sanctioned with misconduct, that fell into two main areas; the possession of prohibited articles and assault on one another (GPS, 2017).

Possession of Prohibited Articles: Cigarettes, Cannabis and Rum: it is acknowledged that prisons are not closed and total institutions (if they ever were), which means contraband flows freely in and out of prisons via visitors, prisoners, civilians and delivery drivers, as well as prison staff. In fact, staff are one of the main supply routes for contraband, with 28% of inmates in Guyana reporting that staff brought drugs into prison (Sarsfield and Bergman, 2017), which is supported by several high profile incidents across all of Guyana’s prisons (e.g., in New Amsterdam, Camp Street, Mazaruni and Timehri). The trade in contraband, particularly illegal drugs in prison, namely cannabis, is facilitated by prison wardens and Police Officers because it is ‘big business’ and there is a lot of money to be made. However, it also indicates corruption, illegal earnings and criminality, which is often accompanied by violence, and is increasingly being associated with (organised) criminal gangs (see Owen and Grigsby, 2012). 

Violence and Assault: Shivs and Shanks: there are incidents of violence by staff against prisoners, by prisoners against staff and prisoners against prisoners, some of which have led to death. In fact, eight out of ten prisoners had witnessed inmates being beaten and a quarter said they had been attacked or beaten in the previous six months illustrating why prison was deemed to be an unsafe place (Sarsfield and Bergman, 2017). Not only have there been instances of prisoners overpowering staff and stealing their weapons, which includes guns, but prisoners also create makeshift weapons which are then used to attack fellow inmates and/or staff, which has on occasion resulted in death:

‘sharpened spoons…boring out your eye…a sharpened spoon up an officer’s nose…they also had sharpened wires, which they could push up under your ribs.’

However, staff also perpetrate violence against prisoners, and according to Minister Benn ‘some unfortunate persons, who perhaps [have] money or from whom money could be extorted…they [prison officers] will take a picture or a video and put knives to his throat and say ‘pay money to us…or else.’ While most prisons are violent, the State have been accused of creating the ‘conditions’ necessary for violence to occur in Guyana’s prisons. The overcrowding, poor infrastructure and staffing issues, when combined with the toxic mix of prisoners, including those with mental health issues who have always been, albeit inappropriately, sent to prison rather than a mental institution, has led to violence, unrest and murder. In fact, reports suggest that:

‘If they (prison authorities) know that a person is not well behaved, they deliberately transfer them to the Capital Section where you will be beaten. It’s a dog eat dog situation.’

Corruption and violence varies across Guyana’s prisons. However, corruption at Lusignan prison is said to have ‘significantly increased after prisoners were transferred there following the deadly fire at the Camp Street prison in March 2016’. In fact, the confiscation and seizure of contraband instigated the 2016 fire at Camp Street, which was described as ‘a war zone… full of burnt bodies’ where anyone in uniform was seen as the enemy. The more recent fire at Lusignan prison last July was also related  to the seizure of contraband as well as the beating of a prisoner by four prison officers, incidents which subsequently led to the prisoners setting ‘fire to the building, demanding that the drugs be returned’. While it is unclear how rife corruption is in Guyana’s Prison Service, contraband, particularly cell phones and drugs, help prisoners to cope with imprisonment; a sentiment also iterated by prisoners at the Camp Street Enquiry: ‘they have to get them cause it wouldn’t be comfortable for them to serve their prison time.’ Therefore, it is difficult to ascertain if corrupt prison officers who collude with prisoners do it to make money or do it out of compassion due to the harsh conditions’ prisoners are forced to endure in Guyana’s jails. This is particularly pertinent since many of the prison officers come from the same communities as their custodians, which is further compounded by a lack of research/knowledge in this area. Although GPS have tried to eliminate corruption, by offering financial incentives (e.g. the Guyana Prison Service offer $25,000 to expose criminal activities in the prison system), as well as recruiting new staff who are currently being trained ‘to manage prisons without corruption’, the demand for contraband will remain as it makes life easier for prisoners and staff alike. Drugs like cannabis have a calming effect on the jail, which makes the job easier for prison officers and may help to explain why some prison officers occasionally turn a blind-eye and/or facilitate its supply (see Cameron, 2020). Unfortunately, due to market dynamics, while demand exists there will always be someone willing to take the risk to ensure their supply, meaning that eliminating corruption and violence is an ongoing challenge facing GPS, particularly while the demand remains amongst prisoners that is largely driven by the poor and ‘potentially life-threatening’ conditions prisoners are forced to endure.

Discharged Convicts Waiting for the Boat, The Illustrated London News, 1885

Therefore, it can be seen that Guyana’s Prison Service continues to be haunted by its colonial past, and that includes its staff. During colonisation, the British blamed isolation, overcrowding and a lack of prospects on the low morale of prison officers. There were very few rules and regulations outlining their role, which meant violence and mistreatment were rife, but justified, as prisons, like the plantations contained dehumanised and often animalised bodies that led to an increase in the number of punishments being administered within the prisons. It is in this context that prison officers and prisoners occupy historical spaces of distress, decay and violence. In fact, the conditions and problems facing GPS today are similar to those in the colonial past despite the plethora of reports, commissions and recommendations that have been made over the years. All grades of prison personnel in the contemporary Guyanese Prison Service – as they did in the past – experience physical  and  mental exhaustion, poor health, stress, anxiety as well as being over worked and under paid, that has for some resulted in excessive alcohol use that according to Governor  P.E.  Wodehouse, could result in death. However, there is very little research on prison officers in Guyana, which is something the MNS in Guyana’s Jails project seeks to rectify. The dearth of research on the experience of prison officers in the global south means that research from the global north is often extrapolated and applied to explaining the experiences of prison personnel – as in this blog – despite its inapplicability and irrelevance, illustrating the need for research that captures the lived experiences of prison officers working in Guyana’s prisons. The role and impact of effective, well-trained and committed staff at all grades should not be underestimated since research – albeit from the global north – shows it can impact on staff motivation and retention; determine the success of a prison or new regime; impact on safety and security; everyone’s health and wellbeing; levels of distress, violence, drug use, self-harm and suicide; as well as recovery and rehabilitation. Although there have been calls for more professionalism and training in GPS, caution must be taken to ensure that the institutional reproduction and dominance of colonial practices does not take precedence and obscure the epistemologies and experiences of the global south that removes the colonised from their own history. An ‘erasure and forgetting’ known as colonial amnesia (see Kerrigan, 2020).  

Tammy Ayres is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology, University of Leicester, UK.

The author would like to thank Clare Anderson, Kellie Moss and Queenela Cameron for their comments/input on an earlier draft of this blog. Thanks, must also go to Kellie Moss for the photographs.

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Abolition and the Colonial Amnesia of Caribbean Prison Systems

Dylan Kerrigan

Introduction

Processes of historical erasure scar the Caribbean and remove transhistorical context. Across disciplines this erasure and forgetting is described as “amnesia” and writers of the Caribbean have described this malady in various ways, including, but not limited to: “dissociative amnesia” – Paula Morgan; “Collective amnesia” – Alyssa Trotz; “Institutionalised Amnesia” – George Lamming; “mass amnesia – Sunity Maharaj; and “Engineered Amnesia” – Charles Mills. Colonial amnesia as described by Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot in Silencing the Past – as bundles of silences – can be imagined as an umbrella label for all these criss-crossing mechanisms erasing the ways cultural behaviours, social hierarchies, and borders, laws and exclusions in the Caribbean and elsewhere, emerge in response to longstanding social realities and political-economic processes.

What is the impact of colonial amnesia on the dignity, restitution and socio-cultural outcomes of Caribbean prison systems today? Colonial amnesia erases colonial continuities from the racist past to the neo-colonial carceral present. One consequence of this is the removal of solutions. In particular, the space to imagine solutions to the structural social problem of racial violence produced by the capitalist social arrangements that emerged from colonialism, and their consequences. These transhistorical consequences include pre-emptive criminalization; forced labour; and investments in the infrastructure of deportation today as prisons in the Caribbean expand, and “carceral surveillance states” become the next failed solution to authoritarian and racist immigration policies in the former centre of Empire, such as the state racism of Windrush and “hostile environments” in the UK.

Racial Capitalism

In confronting the colonial amnesia inherent to our project, previous blogs have discussed evidence of the shifts, continuities and differences between MNS in Guyana’s prisons past and present, and the broader connections to British Empire with its associated drives of conquest, accumulation and social control via hierarchal social class-based society. These include: changes in methods of rehabilitation; mental health and 19th century policing; a history of substance use and control; epidemics and pandemics in British Guiana’s jails; understanding the challenges facing the Guyana Prison Service and more.

In this blog, alongside the concept and consequences of colonial amnesia, I also want to add to this knowledge base Ruth Gilmore’s (2018) broader structural context and political economy of how prisons today, like colonial prisons, extract profit through incarceration and are produced by the logic of racial capitalism. Prison infrastructure, salaries, surveillance and the wider economies around prisons require capital, and the circulation and accumulation of capital for their existence. In this sense prisons from their colonial origin, and today, are not there for justice, families and societies, which are all destabilised by prisons. They are elements in global processes of extraction, capital accumulation and maintaining the social relations of class-based societies. The enforced “in-activities” of people and their bodies inside prisons means criminalisation and incarceration transforms bodies into tiny units of extraction for the accumulation processes of racial capitalism under what can be described in the Caribbean as contemporary Imperialism. As long as a body is incarcerated, capital flows, circulates and accumulates. Prisons, just like colonial slavery and plantations, extract and circulate capital through capturing and enslaving the time of particular racialised social classes.

“Racial hierarchies locate certain bodies in certain spaces, or unequally allocate resources and apply public policies to different territories depending on the bodies that inhabit them” (Castillo 2019, 3). In the contexts of punishment as currently experienced in Caribbean prisons, social class defines who is punishable and held on remand more than others. In a reflection of colonial times those most criminalised and punished by Caribbean laws and jails are also often from the most vulnerable social classes in society (Sarsfield and Bergman 2016, 2017). Racial and social hierarchies handed down from colonial times impact who ends up in jail in the Caribbean. Gilmore “suggests that prisons are geographical solutions to social and economic crises, politically organized by a racial state”. For Gilmore, the prison system is a part of the project of postcolonial state building that extends the racial and class hierarchies of the past. Caribbean prisons contribute to the maintenance of these inequalities through the detrimental impacts of imprisonment not just on individuals but also families and the wider community. These include: human rights violations, the erosion of social cohesion, the relationship between imprisonment and poverty, the public and individual health consequences of imprisonment, and the financial cost of imprisonment which diverts funds from non-custodial alternatives and systems. Yet in the Caribbean for many, a shared history of colonial and post-colonial violence has shaped common and syncretic socio-cultural values on punishment and the treatment of Caribbean people by their States under local systems of law, justice and imprisonment. This impacts what is deemed acceptable to say about Caribbean prisons and their abolition.

Colonial Amnesia and Caribbean Prisons

While colonial amnesia is a central component of how many anthropologists, sociologists, historians and cultural theorists imagine Caribbean worlds, there is a struggle to articulate what should be done about the loss of history and the sense of “pastlessness” in the context of prisons. Richard and Sally Price for example have provided a list of Caribbean writers who through the power of Caribbean imagination have “pointed the way toward possible escapes” (1997, 5). It includes Carpentier’s take on Haiti and the possibilities of “magical realism”, and Lamming’s reminder of “the redemptive potential of Caribbean folk wisdom” to subvert “the hegemony of Western History” through such devices as the Carnivalesque, ridicule, and speaking truth to power. Guyanese Wilson Harris also believed that in the “absence of ruins or a sense of pastlessness in folk thought” that “a philosophy of history may well lie buried in the arts of the imagination” (Harris cited in Price and Price 1997, 5). Glissant too urged for the “struggle against a single History, and for a cross-fertilization of histories, that would at once repossess one’s true sense of time and one’s identity” (Glissant cited in Price and Price 1997, 5).

But where can this escape and redemptive historical imagination take us if as Walcott advised “the imagination is a territory as subject to invasion and seizure as any far province of Empire” (1989, 141); and Caribbean worlds to a degree, whether completely, syncretically or under duress are already occupied by the superstructure of western epistemologies and narratives of the world around discipline and punishment? If the battle against mental occupation means that traditional Western models of history as progress “as sequential time,” is “basically comic”, “absurd” and “the rational madness of history” (Walcott 1974, 6); what does this mean for prison regimes in the Caribbean where structural violence and the consequences of coloniality across social, economic and ecological terrains haunts lives and entraps families? Walcott also wrote of the Antilles that “the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole,” and we can describe such sentiment as similar to what Merle Hodge described as “activist writing” against the legacies of indoctrination (Hodge 1990) and Sylvia Wynter’s suggestion that tackling the domination of historical inequalities in the Caribbean requires militant scholarship.

The seriousness of amnesia and its impact on what can and cannot be said about Caribbean prison worlds is captured in Ann Stoler’s term Colonial Aphasia (2011). Colonial aphasia steps beyond “amnesia” or “forgetting” to suggest three logics at play in the post-colonial inability to work for the abolition of prisons in the Caribbean and a new model beyond reform. These logics are; 1) an occlusion of knowledge; 2) a difficulty generating a vocabulary that associates appropriate words and concepts with appropriate things; and 3) a difficulty comprehending the enduring relevancy of what has been spoken. Within a transhistorical and geo-political context the features of colonial aphasia have great salience for the coloniality of Caribbean punishment regimes and prison worlds. Under colonial aphasia the structural legacies and facts of brutal conquest, genocide and racialised capitalism are anaesthetized external to the Caribbean nation state and become unsayable or individualised, as many postcolonial elites and the middle classes style their polities as modern and democratic in the image of the former imperial centre. As David Slater notes,

This imperializing perspective is anchored in a lack of respect and recognition of the socio-political and cultural value of the non-Western society. This kind of power/knowledge asymmetry does not only depend on the deployment of economic capacity and military force, but is also constituted in terms of a differential discursive enframing. The power to enframe and represent entails putting into place a regime of truth that subordinated nations are encouraged, persuaded, and induced to adopt and make their own. (2011, 455)

Independent democratic states in the Caribbean did not take off economically and develop socially under the same advantageous economic conditions that European countries did. Nor can many Caribbean states, including many small island nations survive in social welfare terms or develop in competitive economic terms under racialised global capitalism. This is particularly evident in the case of social development and climate change, and the role of brutal policing and prison regimes that are inherited from colonial contexts of state anti-black racism.

A Pathway to Abolition?

So, what can be done about the lack of political and policy reflection that Caribbean prisons are spaces where colonial logic and a plantation mentality of control and contain still dominates? Where are the reparations and restitution needed for transformation? And this cannot mean former UK PM’sDavid Cameron offering Jamaica $40m to help build a new prison to house both local inmates and some of the 600 Jamaicans serving time in British jails. How can we move beyond 200 years of unsuccessful prison reform, which has failed to develop Caribbean prisons from the cruel spaces of colonial logic and work, for a drastic change that can decolonise the transhistorical structural violence of racial capitalism? How can we see the road to the abolition of Caribbean prisons; because as Ruth Gilmore’s work connecting the accumulation strategies of racial capitalism to prison worlds recognises, we don’t need to design better prisons – as is the common rhetoric of Caribbean politicians; we need alternatives to prison.

The prison industrial complex as a residue of the European Empire and racial capitalism has travelled the world, and, in that sense, it is expansive, but its real effects, have been to shrivel rather than expand imaginative solutions and alternatives. Colonial amnesia has Caribbean states and their populations stuck in an endless cycle of prison reform that began in the 18th-century colonial world under the emergence of racial capitalism. Abolition in the Caribbean needs to move from a possible idea to something in restitution and reparations terms we can imagine, build, and pilot. In transforming Caribbean prison worlds, political education, mutual aid, and visiting Caribbean prisons to build community are ways to start healing colonial amnesia. While many people are in prisons for the crimes they have committed – and where these crimes were violent, in the context of abolition, solutions will need to be built – it does not erase that confronting the colonial amnesia of prison reform in the Caribbean and reckoning with such colonial aphasia, moves us to mourning, material address, and anger. Specifically, what are we going to do about the colonial regimes of incarceration, criminalisation and capital accumulation still operating in – and haunting – the 21st century Caribbean?

Dylan Kerrigan is a Lecturer in the School of Criminology, University of Leicester, UK.

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East Indian Immigration and Incarceration in Post-Emancipation British Guiana.

Estherine Adams

It drives one out of his mind,
British Guiana drives us out of our minds.

In Rowa there is the court house,
In Sodi is the police station,
In Camesma is the prison.
It drives one crazy,
It is British Guiana.
The court house in Wakenaam,
The police station in Parika,
The prison in Georgetown, Drive you crazy.

(Ved Prakash Vatuk. “Protest Songs of East Indians in British Guiana.”)

This post presents some initial thoughts on the connections between East Indian immigration and incarceration in Colonial British Guiana between 1838 and 1917 as so poignantly expressed through the lyrics of the East Indian Protest Song. Allusions to the period of East Indian immigration in British Guiana does not generally evoke images of prisons but disproportionate number of immigrants spent their period of indenture in this institution. 

Each year, on average, magistrates served warrants on twenty percent of the indentured population in British Guiana, had a conviction rate above fifteen percent and an imprisonment rate of about seven percent (Bolland, 1981). This, according to one historian, “represented tens of thousands of prosecutions instituted by managers and overseers against labourers” and resulted in their stark overrepresentation in the colony’s penal system (Mohapatra, 1981). In 1874 for example of the 4,936 persons in the Georgetown prison, 3,148 were indentured labourers. This trend epitomizes the planters oft-quoted remark that the place of the indentured immigrant was either “at work, in hospital, or in gaol [prison],” and captures the connection between the prison system and the immigration schemes that emerged in Colonial British Guiana (Guyana Chronicle, 2014).

Estate Hospital in British Guiana, The Illustrated London News, 23 March 1889.

The arrival of East Indians in British Guiana coincided with Emancipation and the Village Movement, two significant developments that initiated labour scarcity. The gradual withdrawal of freed Africans from plantation labour led to the introduction of East Indian immigration and the expansion of the prison population due to exploitation and the stringent enforcement of the contract and the labour laws. These labour laws were heavily skewed against the immigrant, even though they stipulated the obligation of both the employer and the labourer. The plantocracy easily manipulated the laws and the courts system in general, to control the immigrants who could be prosecuted for refusal to commence work, or work left unfinished, absenteeism without authority, disorderly of threatening behaviour, neglect or even drunkenness (Dabydeen, 1987). As Guyanese historian Tota Mangar notes, “court trials were subjected to abuse and were, in many instances, reduced to a farce as official interpreters aligned with the plantocracy while the labourers had little opportunity of defending themselves” (Guyana Chronicle, 2014).

In 1838, East Indians comprised less than one percent of the total population. By 1851 this increased to six percent, jumped to 25.8 percent in 1871, and rose again to 42.2 percent in 1901 (NAG, 1901). The prison population followed the same trajectory: as immigration schemes expanded, the prison population expanded. Similarly, as the scheme declined in the early twentieth century the colony’s prison population noticeably declined. Although earlier prison reports differentiate between prisoner by race (white, coloured and black) and crimes committed rather than nationality, a look at the categories of crimes for which persons were incarcerated and the duration of sentences strongly suggests high rates of East Indian incarceration.  

The number of annual convictions for offences against “the Masters and Servants Act including acts relating to indentured Indians” also alludes to a large incarcerated Indian population.  The annual reports indicate that local authorities mainly convicted immigrants for this crime punishable by fines or imprisonment for periods of two weeks to two months. The average immigrant could not pay the fines thus, prison was often the only alternative. For instance, in 1840, of the 1403 persons incarcerated 951 served sentences of three months or fewer for breach of contract.  By 1860, of the 4313 total prison population, 3005 served prison sentences of three months or fewer, while in 1880, of 8393 prisoners, 7459 served similar sentences.  As the general prison population began declining in the waning year of immigration, the high rate of incarceration for persons serving sentences for three months or fewer remained constant. In 1900, for instance, 3045 of the 4610 persons incarcerated served sentences of three months or fewer. It was only after the abolition of immigration in 1917 that a perceptible decline can be observed, for example, in 1918, of 3367 1321 were incarcerated for this duration (TNA, British Guiana Blue Books, 1860, 1880, 1890, 1920).

Beginning in the 1880s Annual Prison Returns categorized convicted persons according to their nationality.  The authority’s need to classify the prison population by nationality is of itself an indicator, not only of an increasing East Indian population in the jails, but also their disproportionate incarceration.  For example, the total population of the colony for 1884 was 252,186.  The East Indian segment of the population was 32,637 of which 15,251 were under indenture. The Annual Prison Returns for that year reveals the following: of the 4,659 persons incarcerated, there were 11 Madeirans, 36 Americans, 43 Chinese, 57 Africans, 84 Europeans, 97 other West Indians, 658 Barbadians, 1630 British Guianese, 2043 East Indians (NAG, 1884).  While in this year East Indians represented 12.9 percent of the Colony’s total population, they represented 43.9 percent of persons in jail.

Associated with the rise in incarceration rates for immigrant labour was an exponential growth in prison locations in the colony. These prisons, interspersed along the sugar belt, ideally located for immigrants to serve short sentences.  Planters continuously petitioned the local legislature for additional prison locations, complaining that in some area “five or six days might be spent in journeying to and from the prison where hard labour was to [be] perform[ed] so that short sentences of seven days or less were rendered ludicrous [and] an expensive waste of time” (NAG, 1860).  In 1838, British Guiana boasted three prison locations in the three administrative counties–Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice–to serve the colony’s 65,556 inhabitants. The two prisons at Georgetown and New Amsterdam, pre-dated British occupation (1803), while the Wakenaam Goal was established in 1837.  At indenture’s abolition in 1917, the colony, with a population of 298,188 had eleven prison locations (NAG, 1860). 

During the seventy-nine years of indentureship, the colony established Capoey Gaol (1838), Her Majesty’s Penal Settlement Mazaruni (HMPS) (1842), Fellowship Gaol (1868), Mahaica (1868), Suddie (1874), Best (1879), Number 63 Gaol (1888), and Morawhanna (1898) (Adams, 2010).  After the abolition of the indentureship system most of these prisons became uninhabited and closed for lack of inmates, thus by 1920 only Georgetown, New Amsterdam, HMPS Mazaruni and Morawhanna prisons remained open (NAG, 1921). This strongly suggests that immigration was the driving impetus for prison expansion. The country currently has five prison sites for its 750,000 inhabitants.

These statistics elicit a number of questions including: what were prison experiences like for these immigrants?  What accommodations, if any, were made for them in the system?  How, in other words, was the penal system, and the administrative structures that supported it, transformed by the presence of this new group of people whom those in power wished to control?  Other historians have established a connection between immigration and increasing mental health issues among East Indian immigrants. (Moss, 2020) To what extent did incarceration influence this phenomenon or did mental health issues influence incarceration?  I anticipate that as our team continue its research into Mental Health, Neurological Disorders and Substance Abuse in Guyana’s jails, we will uncover answers to these questions.   

Estherine Adams is a research associate on the ESRC GCRF project Mental Health, Neurological and Substance Abuse Disorders in Guyana’s Jails, 1825 to the present day.