"The Scale of Punishment Has Been Framed Specially for the Black Man": Imprisonment, Race, and Punishment in the Colonial Bahamas, 1840–1973

Abstract:This article investigates the establishment of a prison system in the post-Emancipation Bahamas and the resulting mass incarceration of the Afro-Bahamian population throughout the colonial period. As race and racial ideas shaped the perception and fear of crime, the prison became the quintessential space of confinement and punishment. Other mechanisms, including hard labour and whipping, were also used in tandem to discipline and exert control over the population. As a result, the colonial elites effectively used the penal system to reinforce their position within the society and the perpetuation of the social and racial order that existed before Emancipation.