The Prison Elsewhere. An Investigation on the Functions of Prison Confinement in Cameroon
This article analyses the functions of the prison in Cameroon, based on a debate on Philippe Combessie’s thinking in prison sociology. It first confronts the classical functions of the prison in the African context to identify both continuities and ruptures; then, in a second step, it sets out another function of the prison, that of domination analyzed in the colonial and post-colonial experience of the prison. The analysis uses history and neo-functionalism to account the way in which the prison-model was disseminated in the colonies to serve Western imperialism and its re-appropriation by the political orders of the independent African states. It emerges from this study that if the universality of the prison can be affirmed, its historicity must be understood by resituating it in the multiple experiences of its translation in each continent.