Law, Violence and Penal Reform: State Responses to Crime and Disorder in Colonial Malawi, c.1900–1959

Climate Shocks Cash Crops and Resilience: Evidence from Colonial Tropical Africa

“…xxxii Another considerable number of imprisonments was the result of debt and tax defaulting, and transgression of a range of colonial ordinances (Hynd 2011). Prison was not the only method of punishment at the hands of the authorities.…”

“…One of the key aspects of colonial rule consisted of the establishment of 'law and order', to increase the governability of the territories. Colonial penal systems were established and served to maintain social order and strengthen colonial domination (Bernault 2007;Hynd 2011;Killingray 1986). The newly established penal systems were used to incarcerate deviant and destitute elements of society.…”

Weather Shocks and Agricultural Commercialization in Colonial Tropical Africa: Did Cash Crops Alleviate Social Distress?

“…To measure social distress, we use annual fluctuations in imprisonment at the district level. While colonial prisons locked people up for a wide range of distress-related behaviours, such as debt, tax and fine default, petty thefts and civil disobedience (Bernault, 2007;Hynd, 2011), imprisonment spikes in years of weather shocks provide us with a particularly valuable inroad to capture social distress.…”

“…Colonial coercive capacity varied considerably from place to place (both across districts and colonies), and incarceration happened to an extent at the discretion of local administrative officers or native authorities. Colonial imprisonment was an instrument of social control, used to lock up criminal, deviant and destitute elements of society, including debt, tax and fine defaulters (Bernault, 2007;Branch, 2005;Hynd, 2011;Killingray, 1986).…”

“…If weather extremes result in loss of agricultural income, and if people have no buffer to cushion this loss of income, we may expect a rise in behaviours and activities that result in imprisonment, including: (1) incidences of distress-induced petty property theft (cf. Papaioannou, 2017), (2) tax, debt and fine defaults resulting in imprisonment (Hynd, 2011); and (3) rebellion and civil disobedience in responses to the fact that rulers prove unable to provide people with a basic level of security and income. Note that our interpretation explicitly accounts for the fact that behaviours resulting in colonial imprisonment may not have been perceived as 'criminal' by African populations, and that we use the descriptive term 'imprisonment' rather than the more contentious 'crime'.…”