Carnal Knowledge under Penitentiary Order: Female Convicts, Gender and Sexuality in Post-colonial Kenya

Abstract

Women incarceration disrupted conventional modes of reproduction and threatened reproductive justice, separated families and funneled children into foster care, restricted women's access to abortion and adequate pregnancy care, shackled women in childbirth, and incarcerated people during their prime reproductive years. Based on historical and ethnographic fieldwork in Langata women's prison, we explore the discourse of sex, reproductive health, and motherhood behind bars. We argue that across time and place, these semicarceral institutions extended the arms of the state to control women's perceived moral and sexual transgressions. The health needs of all prisoners, including women prisoners and their children in Kenya have drawn increasing attention over the past decade. Sexual tensions among females in African prisons have received little attention from researchers since prison studies in Africa tend to focus on the sexual relationships among male prisoners, especially the coercive nature of such relationships in male prisons. This paper, therefore, seeks to close this gap and examine the discourse of reproduction and sexuality in Langata Women's Prison.