A
pioneering book on prisons in West Africa, Colonial
Systems of Control: Criminal Justice in Nigeria
is the first comprehensive presentation of life inside a West African
prison. Chapters by prisoners inside Kirikiri maximum security prison
in Lagos, Nigeria are published alongside chapters by scholars and
activists. While prisoners document the daily realities and struggles
of life inside a Nigerian prison, scholar and human rights activist
Viviane Saleh-Hanna provides historical, political, and academic
contexts and analyses of the penal system in Nigeria. The European
penal models and institutions imported to Nigeria during colonialism
are exposed as intrinsically incoherent with the community-based
conflict-resolution principles of most African social structures and
justice models. This book presents the realities of imprisonment in
Nigeria while contextualizing the colonial legacies that have
resulted in the inhumane brutalities that are endured on a daily
basis.