| Introduced in Senegal in the early 1830s by the French, prisons became a key element in the apparatus of colonial repression. By the mid-1910s, they spread throughout the colony and thirty-three prisons were built by the time of independence. Public security, health policies, racial segregation, and labor questions, all shaped decisions on prisons. Meanwhile, the conquest of Senegal, the end of the slave trade, the economic exploitation of the colony, etc shaped the nature of the penal system. Yet, the emergence of prisons in Senegal did not occur in isolation from the indigenous methods of punishments.; Colonial prisons in Senegal were by characterized by repressive architectures and considerable dysfunctionality. Colonial officials poorly planned prisons and failed to deploy coherent disciplinary practices. Thus, the penal architecture that developed in colonial Senegal worked as a surveillance architecture instead of a disciplinary architecture. This affected the processes of rehabilitation of inmates. While the inadequacy of buildings prevented a sound classification of prisoners, men and women, minors and adults suffered tough penal discipline imposed through heavy workloads and corporal punishments. Thus, a promise of repression rather than a promise of repentance dominated colonial prisons in Senegal. The system remained unchanged until the mid-1940s when efforts were made to reform it. Yet, most of these failed mostly because of a lack of financial backing.; However, the colonial penal world was not a passive world. While some inmates did accommodate the life behind bars by serving in prison positions, a majority of prisoners reacted by committing suicide, and by organizing mystic incantations, escape, rebellion, and refusal to work. Colonial convicts continued to cope with harsh prison conditions until 1960. After Senegal became independent, however, penal policies remained quite static. Only in the early 1970s, new reformative ideas were brought up to improve the system. Yet, these efforts did not concern the maintenance and improvement of existing facilities. No new prison has been built after 1960. However, imprisonment in independent Senegal took on new meanings and functions owing to changes in the socio-political and economic context of the country. In particular, popular perceptions about imprisonment have considerably altered thanks to the role of the media, and to political and religious debates. |
