ABSTRACT
In and beyond anti-colonial struggles, the repressive institutions of prison are variously defined, contested, and recast by law, including through prisoner resistance. The likelihood of resistance and the necessity of the rule of law in prisons apply irrespective of whether people are incarcerated as criminals, terrorists, or political prisoners. The paper articulates four sets of relationships concerning law and prison: a normative aspiration to law as justice; the diversity of law; the necessity of universal rights irrespective of particular actors or institutions; and the role of prison-based struggles in challenging colonial, neo-colonial, and other legal regimes. The relationship between state power in constituting prison rule is considered through the work of John DiIulio’s endorsement of authoritarian prison governance and Giorgio Agamben’s dystopian concerns about zones of lawlessness applied to prisons. Various examples, including colonial Malaya, French Indochina, apartheid South Africa, Northern Ireland, Egypt, and the contemporary United States (including Guantanamo Bay), are considered in the paper to examine and develop arguments. These exemplars illustrate overlapping elements of prison repression and resistance vis-à-vis law despite very different contexts. The normative, theoretical, and empirical perspectives and cases underscore the need for universal rules to protect all prisoners. The goal of universal legal protections is highlighted in the 2015 ‘Nelson Mandela Rules’, an expansion of the United Nations’ ‘Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners’. Mandela’s name underscores the role of resistance, including resistance through law and against law, to achieve at least minimum standards of treatment of all incarcerated people.
