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Tamil Nadu, Prison Department, Statistics, <http://www.
tn.nic.in/prisons/statistics.htm>.Nausheen AhmadSub-Saharan AfricaPrisons in Africa are an un-African institution.
Nowhere in precolonial African societies were pris-
ons used as a form of punishment; West Africa’s
measures for crime control were restorative and ret-
ributivist justice. European colonialists converted
slave forts along the Atlantic coast into gaols or
cachots (Bernault 2003). In postcolonial Africa,
several notorious prisons were shut down, al-
though a few countries opened separate prisons
for women and adolescent males. Prisons turned
into “homes” for young, socially displaced, under-
educated, unemployed, and poor women.
Certain occupations, such as sex work or domes-
tic work, invite sexual abuse and criminalization.
Domestic workers tend to be young, rural, unmar-
ried women who may risk being assaulted or raped
by their patron; in countries where abortion is
illegal and unaffordable, they may commit infanti-
cide out of despair. In some women’s prisons, the
majority of prisoners and remanded women are
accused – or convicted – of infanticide. The social
sanctions for having a child out of wedlock are
severe. Amina Lawal, a Nigerian woman who
escaped – on appeal – the sentence of stoning in a
Sharì≠a court in October 2003, is a case in point.
Some women await execution for up to ten years.
Unfair and sexist trial procedures put women at
further risk; for example, a divorced woman whose
baby was stillborn was still charged with murder
because her doctor’s evidence was not introduced in
court (Amnesty International 2004).
In several African countries, the institution of
polygamy also has a negative effect, particularly on
women who have never received formal education
or who dropped out of primary education. A recent
Ugandan study (Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza 1999)
actually notes the higher prevalence of female
criminality (toward husband, junior co-wife, or the
co-wife’s child) in rural regions where polygamy
prevails. Prisoners, in particular those who were
senior wives, note the disparities in asset sharing by
their husbands; frequently they justify their offenses
by accusing the husband of total economic and
emotional abandonment of them and their children.
The threat of sexual violence is intensified in
women’s prisons, especially where men guard