Preventing torture and organised violence: A study of detention and violence in Sierra Leone
Research project
Contact person: Andrew M. Jefferson
This post-doc research project builds on the PhD project:
Confronted by Practice: towards a critical psychology of prison
practice in Nigeria. The fieldwork is funded by the Danish Council
for Development Research and will be conducted from January-July
2006.
Summary:
The judicial and penal systems of post-conflict societies are
increasingly coming under the spotlight as targets of reform yet
places and practices of detention (POD's) and persons deprived of
their liberty (PDL's) remain under-researched.
This study explores the contradictions and consequences of state
and non-state practices of detention in relation to the
constitution of freedom and (in)security during and after conflict.
The ten-year civil war in Sierra Leone forms the backdrop for the
study. Imprisonment as a repressive state practice on the one hand
and abduction and forced conscription on the other will be explored
via a critical psychological analysis of the ongoing lives of
ex-prisoners/ex-combatants.
Attempts by external actors (e.g. the United Nations, development
agencies, local NGO's) to promote freedom and security via
processes of societal reconstruction and practices of good
governance will be examined in the light of this analysis. As well
as theorising the detention/conflict nexus historically, the
project will also examine contemporary prison practices. Analyses
of practices of detention and perpetrative institutions and
networks and their consequences will inform future policy about the
prevention of torture and organised violence (TOV).