"Prison Without Walls": Resistance, Rebellion, and the Fragility of Colonial Incarceration in The Bahamas

Jonathan Nash, College of Saint Benedict

Fox Hill Prison in Nassau, The Bahamas, was built to impose order, discipline, and colonial control. Instead, it became a site of defiance. In the 1950s and 1960s, as The Bahamas moved toward independence, prisoners—primarily young Black Bahamians and Haitian migrants—contested their confinement through hunger strikes, work refusals, violent confrontations, and mass escape attempts. In 1969, Haitian prisoners launched a "hunger strike to the death," exposing how the prison functioned as an extension of the colony's racialized immigration policies. That same year, a mass protest forced authorities to call in riot squads and keep a British naval frigate on standby. Resistance was constant, ranging from quiet acts of defiance to full-scale rebellion. Each challenge fed into a cycle of repression and unrest, exposing not only the prison's brutality but also its fragility. This paper examines prisoners' resistance as an emergent, destabilizing force that undermined colonial governance. Authorities believed they held total control, yet discipline collapsed under the weight of collective defiance. Even after independence, Fox Hill remained a contested space, as new leaders struggled to assert authority over an institution still shaped by colonial logics. These uprisings were not just acts of desperation but moments of political struggle that shaped the transition to majority rule. By reading these rebellions as part of a broader decolonial movement, this paper challenges linear narratives of carceral control and highlights the unpredictable nature of resistance within colonial and postcolonial institutions.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 60. Crime, Justice and the Law