For nineteenth-century Britons, the rule of law stood at the heart of their constitutional culture, and guaranteed the right not to be imprisoned without trial. At the same time, in an expanding empire, the authorities made frequent resort to detention without trial to remove political leaders who stood in the way of imperial expansion. Such conduct raised difficult questions about Britain's commitment to the rule of law. Was it satisfied if the sovereign validated acts of naked power by legislative forms, or could imperial subjects claim the protection of Magna Carta and the common law tradition? In this pathbreaking book, Michael Lobban explores how these matters were debated from the liberal Cape, to the jurisdictional borderlands of West Africa, to the occupied territory of Egypt, and shows how and when the demands of power undermined the rule of law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This book engages with a controversial issue, namely the establishment of penal colonies and concentration camps in imperial spaces, which have informed ongoing debates on the repressive practices of colonial rule and popular resistance against it. The contributors offer a reassessment of the history of politically motivated incarceration based upon a multi-disciplinary perspective in a global, imperial setting during the twentieth century. The introduction and seven chapters engage with comparative and transnational perspectives on political persecution, forced confinement and colonial rule in British, French, German, Belgian and Portuguese dominions in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. Addressing political incarceration's global imperial dimensions, they focus upon the organisation, strategies, narratives and practices associated with political internment in Africa (Angola, Tanzania, Rhodesia, South Africa), Latin America (French Guyana) and the Pacific region (New Caledonia). Penal legislation, policies of convict transport and political imprisonment, resettlement, prison regimes, resistance and liberation struggles, counter insurgency, prisoner agency, and prisons as cultural spaces and of memory are discussed here for different time periods from the mid-1800s to the late twentieth century. The chapters build upon the ongoing debate on political incarceration in the empire and the remarkable dynamic scientific research witnessed over the last decades. As a result, they provide novel insights into the nature of legal systems, colonial discourse, memory, racial segregation and persecution, prisoners’ narratives of practices of punishment and incarceration, and human rights abuses in imperial spaces. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. The editors have also written an original conclusion to the present volume.

This book engages with a controversial issue, namely the establishment of penal colonies and concentration camps in imperial spaces, which have informed ongoing debates on the repressive practices of colonial rule and popular resistance against it. The contributors offer a reassessment of the history of politically motivated incarceration based upon a multi-disciplinary perspective in a global, imperial setting during the twentieth century. The introduction and seven chapters engage with comparative and transnational perspectives on political persecution, forced confinement and colonial rule in British, French, German, Belgian and Portuguese dominions in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. Addressing political incarceration's global imperial dimensions, they focus upon the organisation, strategies, narratives and practices associated with political internment in Africa (Angola, Tanzania, Rhodesia, South Africa), Latin America (French Guyana) and the Pacific region (New Caledonia). Penal legislation, policies of convict transport and political imprisonment, resettlement, prison regimes, resistance and liberation struggles, counter insurgency, prisoner agency, and prisons as cultural spaces and of memory are discussed here for different time periods from the mid-1800s to the late twentieth century. The chapters build upon the ongoing debate on political incarceration in the empire and the remarkable dynamic scientific research witnessed over the last decades. As a result, they provide novel insights into the nature of legal systems, colonial discourse, memory, racial segregation and persecution, prisoners’ narratives of practices of punishment and incarceration, and human rights abuses in imperial spaces. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. The editors have also written an original conclusion to the present volume.

Contrary to the stereotypical images of torture, narcotics and brutal sexual abuse traditionally associated with Ottoman or 'Turkish' prisons, Kent Schull argues that, during the Second Constitutional Period (1908-1918), they played a crucial role in attempts to transform the empire.

A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights. Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.

In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far-reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of “get tough on crime” attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and ’90s, a range of strategies, from “three strikes” and “a war on drugs,” to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citizens, and have had enormous effects not just on wrong-doers, but on their families and the communities they come from. This book looks at the consequences of these policies twenty years later.

The first study to deal extensively and comparatively with capture, imprisonment and punishment in colonial and postcolonial cultures. Offering textual as well as historical analysis, each chapter focuses on a specific national or regional arena. Each also provides foundational insight into the social, economic and cultural conditions prevalent in colonial societies. Chapters, written by a wide range of international specialists, include coverage of the early modern to the contemporary period as well as coverage of cultural arenas from Europe to Asia, Australia, northern and southern Africa and North America.