The “colonial prison”[1] is not only the place of detention found in the colonies but also an organisation subject to the specificity reserved for their administration. In the same way that there is a colonial penal code (abrogated on 8 January 1877), there is a system of internal penalties in the colonies, which will be distinguished from that concerning convicts sentenced to forced labour in metropolitan France who are sent to serve their sentence in the colonies. “Colonial prison” is therefore an ambivalent term. Depending on whether it refers to the origin (in relation to criminal acts and court judgements affecting the strictly colonial population) or the destination (the colony of French Guiana, where all those sentenced under the Transportation Act of 30 May 1854 were sent – “colonials” and “nationals” together), it has two different meanings. It is a colonial prison in the sense that it is an institution operating from metropolitan France to the colonies via the Ministry of the Navy and the colonies – but whose model is conditioned by the Ministries of Justice and the Interior. It is also a colonial prison in the sense that its ‘Creole’ identity is marked – but with contradictory tensions between local and national interests. This ambiguity is compounded by a doubling of the status of “simple” colonies to “penal” colonies.
In the aftermath of the abolition of slavery, a typical case is that of Guadeloupe, in the midst of a social transformation with the arrival of a workforce of “engagés” of Indian origin accused of arson and vagrancy, alongside freed blacks who were in the news for robbery and violence or rebellion. It is in the continuity of these repeated criminal cases (which do not necessarily have the reality that the press and public opinion want to give them) that the prison service of the colony is restructured by decree of 26 December 1868[2] . The correctional nature of the sentences handed down, as well as the difficulties in introducing prison work, seem to follow the same evolution as in France. There is not a single statistic that does not show a clear analogy with the judicial and penitentiary situation in metropolitan France. It is in the type of population targeted, the reaction it provokes, and the penal and prison system envisaged that the difference should be sought.
Judging only by the difference between “Creole” and “European” rations, the balance is unequal[3] – or would be if there were “European” rationers. For there were no whites in Guadeloupean prisons, as
shown by a statistical report from the prison in Les Saintes in 1884, where all the prisoners were Creoles (58) or of Indian origin (62)[4] . This penitentiary, constituted as a “house of force and correction” from its creation in 1852 until its closure in 1905, was built on the islet of Cabrit to concentrate three categories of convicts: those sentenced to more than one year’s imprisonment, those sentenced to forced labour and those sentenced to imprisonment. The rejection of its penal population partly explains the choice of removal to an islet, but also that of allowing the colony (when it gave up on perpetuating its ephemeral “jail” set up on a pontoon) to “transport” its “African and Asian” prisoners to the jail in French Guiana, instead of letting them serve their sentences at the place where they were sentenced by the courts, as is the case in France: aggravation of the sentence having the effect of introducing into French Guiana, alongside the category of ‘convicts’, the exclusively racial and colonial category of ‘prisoner’.
The iniquity of Guianese imprisonment[5] can be gauged by examining the fate of Guadeloupean (but also Martiniquean and Reunionese) convicts who are sent away on average once a year from the penitentiary-depot of the Îlet à Cabrit. Despite the legally recognised need, at first, to establish a legal distinction between the transported first-class convicts and the second-class colonial prisoners, the penitentiary administration came, in fact, to confuse them, in terms of clearing work (reputed to be “the most painful of colonisation”) as well as in terms of food rations and punishments. Although the straw hat worn by the convicts was replaced by a grey felt hat on the heads of the prisoners, and the initials RC (Réclusionnaires Coloniaux – Colonial Prisoners) were sewn onto the left sleeve of the latter’s jacket, the two categories were nonetheless grouped together, according to criteria that were clearly ethnic and not penal, in the most deadly camps, in particular Sainte-Marie, “for the digging of certain ditches that it would have been dangerous to have whites carry out”[6] .
[1] See Éric Fougère, La Prison coloniale en Guadeloupe (îlet à Cabrit, 1852-1905), Matoury (Guyane), Ibis Rouge Éditions, 2010.
[2] It succeeds that of 1852, on the organisation of colonial prisons, and of 1858, on the internal regime of prisons.
[3] Under the terms of the 1868 decree, rations were broken down as follows : bread 660 g, or cassava flour 60 cl, cod 125 g, vegetables 100 g (Creole prisoners); bread 625 g, fresh meat seasoned with 12 grams of fat 250 g or salted meat 200 g, vegetables seasoned with 12 grams of butter 120 g (for prisoners of European origin or with “European habits”).
[4] An average for the years 1886 to 1891 indicates a so-called “ethnographic” distribution of 62.2% Creole convicts (blacks or mulattoes), 30.5% of Asian origin (Indians), 0.6% of African origin (indentured servicemen), 0.4% of European or metropolitan origin, and 3.3% of various origins (in particular from the English colonies). See Armand Corre, Le Crime en pays créoles, esquisse d’ethnographie criminelle, Paris, Stock, 1889 and, by the same author, L’Ethnographie criminelle d’après les observations et les statistiques recueillies dans les colonies françaises, Paris, C. Reinwald & Cie, 1984.
[5] This is to be distinguished from the seclusion applied to convicts as a disciplinary measure on Île Saint-Joseph, one of the Salvation Islands (Guiana).
[6] Letter from Bonard, Governor of Guiana, to the Minister of the Colonies (18 November 1854). Archives nationales d’Outre-Mer, Colonies series H 45.