Immigration and Incarceration in Post-Emancipation British Guiana

Abstract

This paper focuses on the incarceration of East Indian indentured labourers in colonial British Guiana between 1838 and 1917. Presenting new data on the prison population and the expansion and strategic location of prison infrastructure, it argues that the criminalization of labour through contracts and ordinances led to the disproportionate incarceration of East Indian immigrants in earlier years. It also suggests this was undertaken so as to facilitate labour extraction from immigrants in response to the loss of access to free labour occasioned by the abolition of slavery.