A History of Guyana’s Prisons

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the British built over a dozen jails all over its colony of British Guiana. This history has been the focus of a recently completed British Academy funded project between the University of Guyana and the University of Leicester, in partnership with the Guyana Prison Service. The project asked questions such as: What role did prisons play in the justice system historically? Why and how were men and women jailed in the past? Have experiences of incarceration changed? Can colonial experiments in prison discipline offer lessons that are useful for jail regimes today? In what ways were prisoners supported in rehabilitation and social reintegration, after they were released?