Publications by Kellie Moss
Slavery and Abolition, 2022
This article explores the colonial origins of aspects of law and punishment in Guyana, arguing th... more This article explores the colonial origins of aspects of law and punishment in Guyana, arguing that they can be linked to practices that date from the early nineteenth century. First, it connects the emergence of the still extant system of preliminary inquiries in the criminal justice system to debates about the property rights of slaveowners in the 1820s, the era of amelioration. Second, it explores the importance of plantation agriculture in shaping the colony’s jail-building programme in the years following emancipation in 1834, when prisons became a means of social discipline and labour control and a source of unfree labour. Linking observations on the nation’s colonial history made during a 2016 commission of enquiry into a prison riot in Guyana’s oldest and largest jail, Georgetown, to the history of prisons and prisoner experience and their relationship to enslavement and indentureship, the article reveals the persistence of discourses and practices of imperial governance and associated public attitudes since Independence in 1966. This historicized perspective underpins the argument that colonial systems and mentalities, or what the authors term ‘punitive coloniality’, continue to pervade both structures of state accountability and criminal justice practice in Guyana today.
Slavery and Abolition, 2022
The transition from slavery to freedom in British Guiana was a gradual process, taking place thro... more The transition from slavery to freedom in British Guiana was a gradual process, taking place through a period of apprenticeship for the formerly enslaved which came into effect in 1834. Emancipation produced a series of rapid challenges for the colonial state as it attempted to retain dominance over ex-slaves without the extensive coercive powers that had been allowed under slavery. The introduction of indentured labourers from 1835 further added to these complexities as workers from India, China, Portugal, and Africa generated significant flows of migrants to the region. In this post-emancipation period, the colonial state expanded its powers through the establishment of new laws and institutions of confinement to consolidate its control over an ethnically diverse population. This article interrogates the ways in which punishment and coercive techniques were part of both larger imperial calculations and broader political, economic, and cultural shifts in the colony.
Caribbean Journal of Criminology, 2021
Following abolition in British Guiana, laws were passed to control the movement
and labour of th... more Following abolition in British Guiana, laws were passed to control the movement
and labour of the formerly enslaved and the indentured. Children were among
those convicted of breaking these laws, with some being detained in reformatories.
Independence in 1966 saw the extension with modifications of these colonial laws.
Into the twenty-first century, children were still being detained for colonial era
crimes such as “wandering”. Yet the connections between the colonial and postcolonial treatment of juveniles in Guyana are hardly known. Framed by hauntology and Caribbean feminist criminology, this paper addresses those silences by
drawing on little used archival sources.
Leicester Institute of Advanced Studies Working Paper Series, 2021
Whilst the impact of drugs on the culture of Caribbean societies and Indigenous populations is we... more Whilst the impact of drugs on the culture of Caribbean societies and Indigenous populations is well documented, their role in maintaining influence over an ethnically diverse population and regulating labour productivity are frequently overlooked. In this paper we examine the use of drugs as a means of compelling and retaining labour in British Guiana during the nineteenth century. We also assess changes over time in how the colonial state managed concerns that the use of intoxicants threatened its control over the labouring population through licensing laws, carceral institutions and the criminalisation of certain drugs.
Studies in Western Australian History, 2020
The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 2020
This article argues that history can play a role in addressing present-day concerns about the for... more This article argues that history can play a role in addressing present-day concerns about the form and function of incarceration in the post-colonial nation of Guyana. It analyses some of the key features of imprisonment during the British colonial period (1814-1966), and connects them to the challenges faced by the prisons sector since Independence in 1966. The authors suggest that an appreciation of the history of jails in Guyana-including issues connected with prison capacity, overcrowding, training and education, and rehabilitation-can play a role in inspiring and supporting change in the Guyana Prison Service. In this way, the article suggests, historical research can impact on the administration of criminal justice in Guyana-and potentially in other contemporary post-colonial contexts, both within, and beyond, the Caribbean region.
Each penal regime shapes its own spatial configurations, and space also shapes the character of p... more Each penal regime shapes its own spatial configurations, and space also shapes the character of penal regimes. The historical study of this mutual influence opens up for interrogation the “usable past” of carceral geography. For, even as the specific ways in which space and punishment intertwine change over time, their connections remain a fundamental feature of penality in the modern world. This chapter explores these points in a context in which spatiality is perhaps most explicit: convict transportation. Arguably, this penal regime had an even more intimate relationship with spatiality than prisons did, as it bound together convict circulations and geographical contexts through spatial isolation and interconnectedness. Moreover, the routes of convict transportation often intertwined with other forced labour flows, as well as African enslavement. The existence of such “scales” of incarceration, migration and unfree labour were a recurrent feature of transportation across imperial geographies, well into the twentieth century
Book Reviews by Kellie Moss
Carceral Archipelago Blog Posts by Kellie Moss
Convict Voyages Website by Kellie Moss
Conference Papers by Kellie Moss
Kellie Moss and Katherine Roscoe (Leicester) – (Dis)connected Convict Systems: The Transportation... more Kellie Moss and Katherine Roscoe (Leicester) – (Dis)connected Convict Systems: The Transportation of Imperial and Indigenous Convicts to and within Western Australia
This paper will explore the connections and disconnections involved in the transportation of two distinct types of convicts to West Australia: those sent from across the British Empire and those transported from within the colony itself. By exploring these inter-imperial flows, we will show how one ‘remote’ Australian colony was able to use transportation of imperial and Aboriginal convicts as a means to secure West Australia’s future, long after the large scale transportation of convicts to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) had ceased. By exploring inter-imperial flows we draw attention to the flexibility of transportation on three levels – as operating across vastly different scales, as the forced movement of different kinds of convicts, and serving as concurrently a means of punishment and a way of mobilising labour in the West Australian context.
In an attempt to suppress resistance and prevent frontier conflict, the Nyoongar were transported to Rottnest Island from 1839 onwards, as West Australia adapted ‘domestic transportation’ for secondary offenders long in use in the rest of Australia. Over the course of the next decade, initial hopes of establishing a colony free of the ‘convict stain’ died and West Australia turned to transportation from elsewhere as a solution to their economic and labour problems. From 1850, convicts were transported from across the vast expanse of the empire, including Britain, Bermuda and India. Initially working in gangs within the environs of Perth and Fremantle, the convicts constructed public buildings, roads and jetties. After a specified period of good conduct a ticket-of-leave would be granted allowing the men to be hired by settlers throughout the colony. However, the 9,670 transported convicts were not enough to sustain the colony’s labour demands. With the discovery of pearls and gold in the latter half of the nineteenth century, indentured labour became increasingly important to the expansion of European settlement to the remote districts of WA. This resulted in increased incarceration of Aboriginal convicts, who were then (ironically) used to supplement indentured and waged Aboriginal labour workforces.
Thus this paper maps the coming together of initially quite separate forms of transportation into a rapidly diversifying convict system, involving a vast array of convicts (British, Bermudan, Indian, Aboriginal) as well as links to indentured labour at large.
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Publications by Kellie Moss
and labour of the formerly enslaved and the indentured. Children were among
those convicted of breaking these laws, with some being detained in reformatories.
Independence in 1966 saw the extension with modifications of these colonial laws.
Into the twenty-first century, children were still being detained for colonial era
crimes such as “wandering”. Yet the connections between the colonial and postcolonial treatment of juveniles in Guyana are hardly known. Framed by hauntology and Caribbean feminist criminology, this paper addresses those silences by
drawing on little used archival sources.
Book Reviews by Kellie Moss
Carceral Archipelago Blog Posts by Kellie Moss
Convict Voyages Website by Kellie Moss
Conference Papers by Kellie Moss
This paper will explore the connections and disconnections involved in the transportation of two distinct types of convicts to West Australia: those sent from across the British Empire and those transported from within the colony itself. By exploring these inter-imperial flows, we will show how one ‘remote’ Australian colony was able to use transportation of imperial and Aboriginal convicts as a means to secure West Australia’s future, long after the large scale transportation of convicts to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) had ceased. By exploring inter-imperial flows we draw attention to the flexibility of transportation on three levels – as operating across vastly different scales, as the forced movement of different kinds of convicts, and serving as concurrently a means of punishment and a way of mobilising labour in the West Australian context.
In an attempt to suppress resistance and prevent frontier conflict, the Nyoongar were transported to Rottnest Island from 1839 onwards, as West Australia adapted ‘domestic transportation’ for secondary offenders long in use in the rest of Australia. Over the course of the next decade, initial hopes of establishing a colony free of the ‘convict stain’ died and West Australia turned to transportation from elsewhere as a solution to their economic and labour problems. From 1850, convicts were transported from across the vast expanse of the empire, including Britain, Bermuda and India. Initially working in gangs within the environs of Perth and Fremantle, the convicts constructed public buildings, roads and jetties. After a specified period of good conduct a ticket-of-leave would be granted allowing the men to be hired by settlers throughout the colony. However, the 9,670 transported convicts were not enough to sustain the colony’s labour demands. With the discovery of pearls and gold in the latter half of the nineteenth century, indentured labour became increasingly important to the expansion of European settlement to the remote districts of WA. This resulted in increased incarceration of Aboriginal convicts, who were then (ironically) used to supplement indentured and waged Aboriginal labour workforces.
Thus this paper maps the coming together of initially quite separate forms of transportation into a rapidly diversifying convict system, involving a vast array of convicts (British, Bermudan, Indian, Aboriginal) as well as links to indentured labour at large.
and labour of the formerly enslaved and the indentured. Children were among
those convicted of breaking these laws, with some being detained in reformatories.
Independence in 1966 saw the extension with modifications of these colonial laws.
Into the twenty-first century, children were still being detained for colonial era
crimes such as “wandering”. Yet the connections between the colonial and postcolonial treatment of juveniles in Guyana are hardly known. Framed by hauntology and Caribbean feminist criminology, this paper addresses those silences by
drawing on little used archival sources.
This paper will explore the connections and disconnections involved in the transportation of two distinct types of convicts to West Australia: those sent from across the British Empire and those transported from within the colony itself. By exploring these inter-imperial flows, we will show how one ‘remote’ Australian colony was able to use transportation of imperial and Aboriginal convicts as a means to secure West Australia’s future, long after the large scale transportation of convicts to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) had ceased. By exploring inter-imperial flows we draw attention to the flexibility of transportation on three levels – as operating across vastly different scales, as the forced movement of different kinds of convicts, and serving as concurrently a means of punishment and a way of mobilising labour in the West Australian context.
In an attempt to suppress resistance and prevent frontier conflict, the Nyoongar were transported to Rottnest Island from 1839 onwards, as West Australia adapted ‘domestic transportation’ for secondary offenders long in use in the rest of Australia. Over the course of the next decade, initial hopes of establishing a colony free of the ‘convict stain’ died and West Australia turned to transportation from elsewhere as a solution to their economic and labour problems. From 1850, convicts were transported from across the vast expanse of the empire, including Britain, Bermuda and India. Initially working in gangs within the environs of Perth and Fremantle, the convicts constructed public buildings, roads and jetties. After a specified period of good conduct a ticket-of-leave would be granted allowing the men to be hired by settlers throughout the colony. However, the 9,670 transported convicts were not enough to sustain the colony’s labour demands. With the discovery of pearls and gold in the latter half of the nineteenth century, indentured labour became increasingly important to the expansion of European settlement to the remote districts of WA. This resulted in increased incarceration of Aboriginal convicts, who were then (ironically) used to supplement indentured and waged Aboriginal labour workforces.
Thus this paper maps the coming together of initially quite separate forms of transportation into a rapidly diversifying convict system, involving a vast array of convicts (British, Bermudan, Indian, Aboriginal) as well as links to indentured labour at large.