Prison was not only a tool for political oppression: it also came to play a key role in forcing local populations into the labour force. Imprisonment fed into worksites, plantations and infrastructures. As such, incarceration was also economically useful, as the imprisoned bodies were made to serve colonial development.

Samuel Tracol is a member of the research group Penal Colonisation in Latin America and the Caribbean (Colonisation Pénale en Amérique latine et aux Caraïbes, CoPALC). He points out that spatial planning in Latin America was closely linked to penal colonisation. “In numerous peripheral regions of the continent – such as the borders of the Amazon, northern Mexico and southern Argentina – prisons were established as tools to occupy and control these remote areas”, he explains. Penal colonisation thus played a central role in territorial expansion, by facilitating the forced installation of populations sent from large urban centres. “For example, in Brazil, inhabitants of the coastal city of Rio de Janeiro were relocated to the northernmost regions of the country in an effort to colonise these areas and establish a workforce there. This process of occupation and control through subjugation contributed significantly to the formation of the Latin American nation-states.”

The penal colonies played a central role in the colonial apparatus, as those in power sent not only people convicted of common law offences, but also political dissidents and numerous others labelled “undesirables”. Forced labour was key in these places, designed as a tool for punishment, moral rehabilitation and serving colonisation, all at a low cost for the colonial administration.

Starting in 1654, the British crown organised the transport of some convicted individuals to its colonies in North America to work there in lieu of being executed, and continued this practice until the beginning of the wars of independence. It then redirected transport to Australia: around 162,000 people were sent to the territory between 1787 and 1868, 80% of whom had been found guilty of theft. In France, the Law of 30 May 1854 regulated the transport away from mainland France of all people sentenced to forced labour: between 1852 and 1866, 18,000 were transferred to French Guiana, including nearly 40% who died there due to the climate or illnesses. In light of the significant mortality rate, the government then decided to send only “Indigenous people” to French Guiana. The others went to New Caledonia, where the government aimed to establish a settlement.

The colonial process filled a capitalist role: putting the colonised people to work and forcing them to accept the rules of the enterprise. On the Indian subcontinent, for example, the East India Company brought the first prison to the area, as noted by Sarah Belal from Justice Project Pakistan (JPP): “It was built on the orders of the East India Company, before the British authorities had even taken control of India. […] They weren’t even in control of the territory when they built a prison! The audacity!” Prisons were designed as spaces of hard labour, with incarcerated people used for infrastructure projects (roads, railways) as part of the colonial economy.

In Côte d’Ivoire, the forced labour of incarcerated individuals helped meet the need for a workforce to serve the colonial authorities’ objectives, in particular the construction of infrastructure such as public administration buildings.

Colonies represented open-air prisons for slaves, in the words of Roberson Édouard, member and co-founder of the Centre for Research and Exchange on Security and Justice (Centre de recherche et d’échange sur la sécurité et la justice, CRESEJ). Slaves could not do as they wished, as they were assigned to a plantation and obligated to remain there.

“If a person left his plantation without permission and was found on another, or even on a neighbouring street, there was a specific police force that struck: the ‘Maréchaussée’ (Marshalcy)”, he explains. “Colonial justice could then be applied against the person, depending on what they were reproached with. If they were caught drinking alcohol, they were whipped. If they were caught committing an act of sedition, or attempting to run away, the punishment was amputation – or the death penalty.”

The researcher stresses that it was a system of constant control: each time the master wanted to send the slave to buy something, for example, he could give them a visa, a written note that authorised them to leave the plantation for a specific task. In the opinion of Roberson Édouard, this was a form of experimentation with prison in the community: “the slave is in prison, but without being locked away in a cell – although some wore chains or could be isolated. All of these elements – control over the body, discipline, mistreatment, punishment – existed in the colonies. They were tested out and explored in the plantations. And later, each of these mechanisms, each manner of applying them in supposedly modern societies, was merely a sophistication of what had first been put to the test in the colony and had been ‘successful’.”

Although flags often change with independence, laws sometimes remain the same. In relation to penal matters, many newly independent states retained the legal texts and structures inherited from the colonial powers. The offences they had introduced – vagrancy, begging, street peddling, unpaid debt – thus continued to criminalise poverty. The colonists were gone, but their social control apparatus remained.

In Pakistan, the Prisons Act of 1894, enacted under British rule, served as the foundation for the penitentiary system. JPP notes that it placed emphasis on incarceration as a tool for control and punishment rather than for rehabilitation. When the provinces did modify their penitentiary rules, the reforms were minimal. Other provinces adopted them unchanged, such as in Punjab, which includes over 60% of the country’s prison population, notes Sarah Belal.

In Pakistan, minor offences are often sanctioned disproportionately, in particular with prison sentences and heavy fines. Their criminalisation has shifted, according to JPP, from a colonial tool for control to a deeply rooted facet of the modern legal system.

Laws such as those relating to vagrancy or begging were introduced during the colonial period to control marginalised communities, regulate labour and suppress dissent. JPP views this as essentially criminalising poverty and social mobility. These laws targeted poor people, those without jobs and nomadic tribes, framing their existence as a threat to public order.

The organisation notes that after independence, rather than shifting towards restorative justice, the legal system doubled down on punitive measures, in particular through general laws such as the anti-terrorist law of 1997, which is often improperly applied to offences with no connection to it. Consequently, vagrancy, begging, petty theft and the possession of small quantities of drugs frequently lead to incarceration. In addition, JPP notes that abuses of power by the police – such as the use of torture to obtain confessions for minor offences – continued unchecked after the practice was institutionalised under the colonial regime.

In Haiti, “independence amounted to driving out the former colonists rather than changing the colonial provisions and practices”, observes Roberson Édouard. Independence was declared in Haiti on 1 January 1804, but the Constitution was not amended until 1805, he points out, and the penal code another year after that.

“Many aspects inherited from the colonial period were thus retained and reintegrated into the new state, simply because there was no immediate alternative”, he explains. “In the middle of the chaos of revolution, no one can calmly sit down and say, ‘Listen, gentlemen, once the war is won, we are going to draft a new constitution, a new penal code, a new civil code.’ And until then, the colonial systems are appropriated and adapted, sometimes without any modifications.” The new state is established, little by little, to a great extent with the tools of the former system, for want of anything better, for lack of time.

Studies by the Centre for Research and Exchange on Security and Justice (CRESEJ) indicate that following independence, the authorities continued to equate poor people and vagrants with wrongdoers and criminals. According to the CRESEJ, rural depopulation, emigration, vagrancy and even idleness were seen as threats to the survival of new states. Numerous laws were passed to forbid these behaviours, which the authorities considered dangerous and unproductive. These measures therefore drew on criteria related to race and social status. Roberson Édouard notes that this explains why “the rich mixed-race people in the country did not find themselves in prison, because they were not answerable to Haitian common law”.

The consequences of these policies are flagrant even today: according to data collected by the CRESEJ, minor offences and violations represent 25% of the cases handled by Haitian justice, primarily for theft (64%) and assault (25%). Young people in precarious job situations represent the vast majority of people convicted of these offences.

In Brazil, the penal code was amended in 1890, putting an end to the “galleys”, which were generally forced labour prisons. Camila Similhana, member of the CoPALC, stresses that when the Republic was established, a certain number of incarcerated individuals – Black, for the most part, and people of colour, more generally – were kept in the “galley” system.

Criminalisation continued to target behaviours attributed to what Hugo Leonardo Rodrigues Santos calls “insignificant” people (gente miúda), from the most vulnerable margins of society, including a great number of people recently freed from slavery. Numerous criminal offences in the code of the Republic targeted these “usual suspects” through the criminalisation of begging, vagrancy, alcoholism, capoeira and shamanism.

The continuation of colonialism is also evident in buildings. “Many of the prisons in Africa today date back to the colonial era and were originally designed to hold 50 or 60 people”, says Maria Teresa Manuela, Special Rapporteur on Prisons in Africa. “Today, however, they house up to 100 times that number.”

In Côte d’Ivoire, Paul Kouadio adds that nearly 80% of the country’s current prisons were constructed during the colonial period. Of the nine facilities that date back to before the country’s independence, the oldest is located in Grand-Bassam (1900). Other prisons established after the colonial period are located in converted buildings that were formerly commercial or residential properties.

The colonial codes survived independence, as did colonial buildings, and their targets remained the same. The bodies criminalised under colonial rule – those of poor, Black, and/or “dangerous” people – are the same as those we lock up today. History is repeating itself under different names.

Despite their small demographic presence, the members of Indigenous communities overwhelmingly fill prisons. In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represented 33% of the people incarcerated in June 2023, whereas they represent only 3.8% of the general population of Australia. Aboriginal women and girls represent one third of the female prison population in the state of Queensland, nearly eight times their proportion in the general population. They are more likely than non-Indigenous women to be convicted of minor, non-violent offences and to be incarcerated for short periods. Indigenous children are not spared, either: they represent 70% of the people imprisoned in most of Queensland and over 90% in the north. According to reports from the Human Rights Law Centre, around 600 children under 14 years old are imprisoned each year.

In Canada, half of all women in prison are Indigenous, even though they constitute only 5% of the country’s total female population. The number of Indigenous women federally sentenced increased by 60% over the last ten years.

The legacy of slavery continues to extensively shape contemporary penal systems. This is what Angela Davis illustrates in her work, in particular in Are Prisons Obsolete?, by outlining the way in which the modern prison emerged in the United States as an extension of slavery following its abolition. Newly criminalised behaviours specifically targeted Black people after slavery ended: vagrancy, petty theft, absence from work, “insolence” towards a white person – which were regulated by the new “Black Codes” inspired by the Slave Code.

Angela Davis mentions the long-term impact of an important exception to the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution: slavery and involuntary servitude were abolished “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”. At the time that the Black Codes were in place, there were certain criminal offences that only Black people could be “duly convicted” of. “Thus, former slaves, who had recently been extricated from a condition of hard labor for life, could be legally sentenced to penal servitude”, writes Davis.

She cites the work of Mary Ellen Curtin, which reveals that in Alabama, prior to the emancipation of the 400,000 Black slaves present in the state, 99% of the prison population was white. This trend then reversed radically, and Black people represented the majority of people convicted in the state.

The charges targeting Black populations, in particular for theft, were often fabrications. In the words of Mary Ellen Curtin, they “served as subterfuge for political revenge. After emancipation the courtroom became an ideal place to exact racial retribution.” The offences were therefore used to justify mass imprisonment and the use of forced labour in the prisons of the South. Angela Davis writes that in the United States, the prison institution is first and foremost a transformation of slavery.

In Brazil, Hugo Leonardo Rodrigues Santos stresses that racism is intrinsically linked to the social structure, due in particular to the fact that “Brazilian criminology was historically built on racist precepts, poorly disguised by scientific efforts towards an alleged (exclusionary) modernization of the country”. He points out that during the abolition of slavery in 1888, the former slaves lived in poverty and brought about the emergence of the first favelas.

Camila Similhana notes that, as a former colony, Brazil’s history was profoundly impacted by economic exploitation. The current carceral system is therefore intrinsically linked to the slaveholding tradition that moulded it. “The archives and the penal maps of the colonial period, of the Empire, then of the Republic show one constant: there are primarily people of colour or of foreign origin filling the prisons”, she states. “This pattern was not broken with the First Republic (1889–1930): on the contrary, it continued. The mechanisms of social and racial segregation, rather than going away, continue to structure the prison population, prolonging the legacy of slavery in another form.”

The impact was also territorial: the prisons were erected, as Samuel Tracol notes, on the vestiges of the former plantations. This choice was not merely about reusing land: it represents the structural continuity between the slave order and the contemporary penal system. The model of the plantation, a pillar of the colonial economy in Latin America, did not disappear with independence – it morphed into something else.

In Brazil, Hugo Leonardo Rodrigues Santos illustrates how the police force and the justice system apply racial differentiation reasoning and treat the non-white population differently, subjecting these people to stricter control measures and forms of discipline. In the United States, the incarceration rate of Black Americans in state prisons was, in 2021, roughly five times higher than that of white Americans. Over half of the prison population is Black in 12 states, including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan and New Jersey. In Brazil, nearly 69% of the people incarcerated in 2023 were Black, and women of African descent represented 59% of the prison population in 2022.

In several territories where political autonomy remains limited, the institutions for justice and repression play a central role in maintaining power relations. These areas experience the perpetuation of strict control mechanisms, in particular through the increased use of imprisonment.

In French Guiana, the situation stems directly from the French colonial legacy. This is also true across the border in Brazil, where comparable dynamics of social control and exclusion occur. Otávio Luís Siqueira Couto, a member of the CoPALC, highlights that in French Guiana, half of the prison population is made up of foreign nationals, in large part with Brazilian heritage. Many are locked up for minor offences related to gold panning, working without legal status or illegal fishing; others are arrested on the grounds of illegal residency. “The political assumptions about public safety based on drug control and illegal immigration contextualise an entire policing and prison system that is aimed at undesirable populations that do not have papers”, the researcher notes.

“Although French Guiana is south of France, it maintains a north-south relationship with Brazil that continues to be part of a colonial context.” And although these populations are not wanted in the area, the authorities nevertheless need them: for example, he says, construction work in French Guiana is primarily carried out by exploiting the labour of Brazilians.

The correctional facilities in the overseas territories under French authority face more significant difficulties than those in mainland France, in particular in relation to overpopulation. “It’s closely linked to the colonial system, because the need to punish is much greater”, observes Samuel Tracol. He notes that in French Guiana, the prison conditions are sometimes such that some incarcerated individuals’ fear of death hearkens back to the episodes of yellow fever in the 19th century. Two thirds of French Guiana’s prison population died of the illness each year, a higher rate than in the civilian population.

“Prison kills because the principle is the same as in the colonial society: the life of a person deprived of liberty has less value than the life of a free person”, observes the researcher. “Prisons in the colonial and post-colonial situation are not places for restoring humanity or rehabilitating people, but for forgetting them and leaving them to die.”

The observation is similar in Kanaky New Caledonia, where the state was condemned on several occasions for degrading prison conditions. The French branch of the International Prison Observatory (OIP-SF) notes that the Nouméa penitentiary centre, also called “Camp Est”, places incarcerated individuals, many of whom are Kanak, in shipping containers attached to the buildings of a former labour camp that opened in 1864. The territory has 2.5 times more incarcerated individuals per inhabitant than mainland France, and the vast majority of them are Kanak. The OIP-SF writes: “although no statistical study has documented it, the prison service for rehabilitation and probation (SPIP) in Nouméa estimates that ‘over 90%’ of the people incarcerated at the Camp-Est facility are Kanak, even though they constitute only 41% of the population.”

These prisons are full to bursting. In February 2024, the French prison service announced the construction of a new correctional facility by 2032 – in the words of then-Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti, “the state’s largest investment in New Caledonia”.

In French Guiana, the Ministry plans to develop a new correctional facility in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, with nearly 500 spaces over 25 hectares. Gérald Darmanin commented on the subject in May 2025, highlighting the comparison to penal colonies.

A few weeks prior, Samuel Tracol had spoken to us about the legacy of this project, which was first announced in 2017. “Saint-Laurent was originally a penal town founded by the penal colony and under the aegis of the prison service.” The future prison will be constructed in the Margot area as part of a planned coordinated development zone (zone d’aménagement concerté, ZAC).

The ZAC must include an economic and residential cluster with around 500 housing units, a school, a sports centre and a judicial centre, in addition to the correctional facility. “The idea is to develop this untouched territory by constructing the prison and bringing in its 500 staff members – administrators, guards, etc.”, notes Samuel Tracol. “It’s the state’s system of developing a territory, a vision of the Guianese space that must be conquered over the forest, over the Indigenous peoples, with the intention of pushing back informal settlements and bringing in the state in its most sovereign capacity.”

Transfers are another colonial method making their way back into the spotlight. The insurrectionary movements in spring 2024 resulted in the transfer of around 60 people incarcerated in Kanaky New Caledonia to prisons in mainland France – 17,000 kilometres away from their place of residence.

Seven militants from the Field Action Coordination Cell (Cellule de coordination des actions de terrain, CCAT), a Kanak pro-independence organisation, were also transferred. Éric Dupond-Moretti, Minister of Justice in May 2024, stated that this measure was implemented “so that there would be no contamination of the most fragile minds”. “In addition to the vagueness of the expression – the people who had just been arrested had not yet been judged, beyond quick procedures, except for the alleged perpetrators of criminal offences –, the approach seemed to be part of a security reaction to address the tensions flaring up across the archipelago”, writes OIP-SF. The organisation reported that these operations were carried out with a complete lack of transparency, without the people affected being warned, or their loved ones informed. Upon their release, it fell to them to pay for their return ticket, once the judicial review lasting at least 18 months had been completed in mainland France.

In many formerly colonised or still-colonised territories, the judicial and carceral institutions could be perceived as illegitimate. Their historical imposition resulted in a disinterest, or even a deep mistrust, in the state justice system. This wariness can coexist with other forms of social regulation, which may be closer to lived realities.

In Côte d’Ivoire, a study conducted by ACAT Côte d’Ivoire, FIACAT and the Centre for Studies and Research of Diplomacy, Public Administration and Politics (Centre d’études et de recherche sur la diplomatie, l’administration publique et le politique, CERDAP²) found that over 66% of the people surveyed who had been placed in preventive detention felt that their case should have been resolved differently. They mentioned a process of appealing to an authority, other than the state, that they recognise as legitimate to take action: the chiefdom, chief, different communities, etc.

The people surveyed mentioned other means of managing conflicts, such as amicable settlements or the creation of an opportunity for dialogue with the victim or their loved ones to ask forgiveness or for mediation to take place between the families. “The importance of the collective clearly emerges in these responses, in contrast with the isolation of both the suspect and the victim during criminal proceedings”, notes Bénédicte Fisher, a researcher at CERDAP².

The study stresses that certain people also expressed confusion concerning the state proceedings, as they felt that the dispute had been settled several years prior: “The matter had already been resolved by the different families. Forgiveness had been requested and the fines had been paid”; “Our village leaders and the various communities had settled the matter”. Paul Kouadio and Lionel Grassy explain that the people incarcerated in preventive detention often indicate that they do not know why they are incarcerated, as their case has already been tried, mediation has occurred and a sanction imposed.

“But the reparation was not established or recognised by the penal code, and was merely settled between the victims, the perpetrators and their respective families. Even if the village leaders resolve the issue, either party can bring the case before a judge, who is not bound by the judgment of traditional justice. The case is therefore re-tried in compliance with the rules of common law.” Paul Kouadio and Lionel Grassy note that this operating method inspires distrust towards a justice system in which certain people do not feel seen. Penal justice is perceived by the communities as an instrument designed to punish rather than regulate social life.

In Canada, Mylène Jaccoud says that the judicial system will continue to be seen by Indigenous communities as “illegitimate, so long as the law continues to be a ‘tool for the dispossession and dismantling of Indigenous societies’ and not an ‘instrument to support the emancipation of Indigenous peoples’”.

The distrust of Indigenous peoples towards the justice system indeed remains pronounced: in 2020, only 37% said they trusted it, versus 53% of non-Indigenous people who do not belong to a visible minority.

In Nunavut, important work was undertaken to restore the Inuit legal traditions via the Akitsiraq Law School as well as through Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ)¹. Pierre Rousseau points out that prior to colonisation, the elders gave advice to community members who had broken the law. If the behaviour continued, they could then ostracise them, organise song duels or one-on-one bouts in the event of conflict between two people, or exclude them from the community, or even execute them in the most serious circumstances.

These laws transformed over time but continue to exist and are still applied informally, notes Pierre Rousseau. However, he laments the lack of support or recognition for these practices from the legal system. “Nevertheless, as part of community justice programmes, IQ is now applied by the local justice committees, either through healing circles or a course of traditional activities in the tundra”, he writes. “These are clear improvements, but they remain marginal compared to the omnipresent state system, and we are still far from an integrated justice system model for conflict resolution based on the culture and traditions of the Inuit.”

In Kanaky New Caledonia, the distrust towards the French judicial system is particularly significant. Justice is often perceived as “white”, or even “colonial”, as noted by the OIP-SF: the people judged are Kanak, while those doing the judging are primarily from mainland France and are only in the area for a short period of time. “A lone magistrate of Kanak origin is practising – on an interim basis – in New Caledonia, and the bar of Nouméa includes only two Kanak solicitors.”

In the event of disputes in Haiti, the population prefers exploring routes other than the state legal system. Arnaud Dandoy, member and co-founder of the Centre for Research and Exchange on Security and Justice (Centre de recherche et d’échange sur la sécurité et la justice, CRESEJ), stresses that “the population is reluctant to turn to the police and courts to resolve their disputes, instead favouring ‘alternative’ methods of conflict resolution”. His colleague Roberson Édouard observes that given the current situation, society’s response to criminality is not prison but summary execution. “If someone fears for their safety and their family’s safety, they are thinking first and foremost of defending themself”, he explains. “The current mood is one of self-defence above all, creating a climate of self-protection rather than a climate of justice.”