La prison coloniale au Sénégal, 1790-1960: Carcéral de conquête et défiances locales

Senegal's colonial prison system was established at the end of the eighteenth century, a moment of perceived emergency for the penal prison in Western Europe and the United States. Introduced by the French colonizer, this prison system and its penitentiary grid followed the routes of the territorial conquest as a privileged means of the colonial policy of repression. Despite its origins, the Senegalese prison system ignored the universal penitentiary principles espoused by Western reformers in favor of a prison enclosure based purely on colonial logic: a place of punishment, a place to construct the inferiority of natives, and a platform for the coercive mobilization of a work force.

This total institution invaded a society that never experienced prison as a penal technique. As a result, the colonial prison never achieved local legitimacy. Victims created negative representations of prison based on the slave trade and captivity. Detainees and local populations resisted the colonial prison with the same goal: ensuring the failure of punishment and forced labor. Through permanent social mobilization, they created their own strategies and networks of complicity against prison. Their actions, successful in large part, furthered the global struggle against colonization.