Prison of the Womb: Gender, Incarceration, and Capitalism on the Gold Coast of West Africa, c. 1500–1957

Abstract

To date, studies of imprisonment and incarceration have focused on the growth of male-gendered penal institutions. This essay offers a provocative addition to the global study of the prison by tracing the emergence of a carceral system in West Africa in the nineteenth century that was organized around the female body. By examining archival testimonies of female prisoners held in what were called “native prisons” in colonial Gold Coast (southern Ghana), this essay shows how birthing, impregnation, and menstruation shaped West Africa penal practices, including the selection of the captives, the duration of their time in prison, and how the prison factored into the legal infrastructure around tort settlements for debts and crimes. The term “prison of the womb” is used here to describe how the West African prison held bloodlines captive, threatening the impregnation of a female kin member as a ticking clock for tort settlement. Furthermore, it will be shown that this institution was imperative to the spread of mercantile capitalism in nineteenth-century Gold Coast.

Birthing hostages: Haitian women's stories of maternal medicine, debt, and hospital detention

“…Known as "panyarring," creditors would frequently take such hostages to lubricate stalled repayments. As people who were facing impending births, or who could be raped and made pregnant in captivity, reproductive females were particularly compelling inmates for institutions intent on exerting the highest possible pressure on communities (Balakrishnan, 2023). Similarly in Haiti, the suffering inflicted on detained mothers and infants is meant to urgently compel families to pay.…”

“…Historian Sarah Balakrishnan (2023) explores a similar hostage‐based system in colonial Ghana, where prisons targeting women captives were used to pressure families and communities to repay debts. Creditors and authorities exploited female confinement as a ransom technology, taking advantage of the particular community distress inflicted when reproductive‐aged women faced mistreatment.…”