Colonialism and its aftermaths in prisons in Guyana: An introduction

This special issue presents findings from a collaborative project funded by the ESRC's Global Challenges Research Fund, which researched prisons in Guyana. The project was a partnership between academics from the universities of Guyana and Leicester and officers in the Guyana Prison Service. The disciplinary backgrounds of the university researchers spanned history, criminology, public health, anthropology, sociology, and politics and international relations, while officers were drawn from all ranks including welfare and medical staff. Clare Anderson and Mellissa Ifill's previous work, funded by the British Academy and supported by researchers Estherine Adams and Kellie Moss, uncovered the history of colonial-era practices and operations in Guyana's prisons, up to Independence in 1966 (Anderson et al., 2020; Moss et al., 2020). Prison officers immediately saw contemporary resonances and proposed that we might explore the post-colonial impacts of approaches to incarceration in the country now.