“At Work, in Hospital, or in Gaol”: Women in British Guiana’s Jails, 1838–1917

Abstract

This article argues that labour, particularly female labour, was central to the expansion of colonial Guiana’s post-emancipation penal system between 1838 and 1917. It highlights the intersection of coerced labour and colonialism in the post-emancipation period, by centring the lives of incarcerated women to understand the nature of state governance in colonial spaces. It argues the plantocracy leveraged the expansion of prisons not to control crime but to control labour. As the newly constructed prisons filled, colonial and local authorities explained increased incarceration rates as a legitimate response to increased crime, supported by an evangelical rhetoric that promoted incarceration to encourage reform when it was accompanied by religious instruction and education. In practice, authorities used the prison system as a means of labour discipline, labour extraction and as a threat to secure future docility. Female indentured labourers convicted of petty crimes, including breach of contract, were often sentenced to work on plantations; creole women worked on sea defence construction and maintenance. A common refrain in the colony was that free labour could not be obtained. The malleability of prisoners as a labour force was thus attractive to the government, as prisoners could be moved, deployed and disciplined in ways that were not possible for free labour.