To date, studies of imprisonment and incarceration have focused on the growth of male-gendered penal institutions. This essay offers a provocative addition to the global study of the prison by tracing the emergence of a carceral system in West Africa in the nineteenth century that was organized around the female body. By examining archival testimonies of female prisoners held in what were called “native prisons” in colonial Gold Coast (southern Ghana), this essay shows how birthing, impregnation, and menstruation shaped West Africa penal practices, including the selection of the captives, the duration of their time in prison, and how the prison factored into the legal infrastructure around tort settlements for debts and crimes. The term “prison of the womb” is used here to describe how the West African prison held bloodlines captive, threatening the impregnation of a female kin member as a ticking clock for tort settlement. Furthermore, it will be shown that this institution was imperative to the spread of mercantile capitalism in nineteenth-century Gold Coast.

迄今为止，对监禁和监禁的研究主要集中在男性刑罚机构的发展上。这篇文章通过追溯 19 世纪西非围绕女性身体组织的监狱系统的出现，为全球监狱研究提供了一个具有启发性的补充。通过研究关押在殖民地黄金海岸（加纳南部）所谓“本土监狱”中的女囚犯的档案证词，本文展示了分娩、怀孕和月经如何影响西非的刑罚做法，包括俘虏的选择、持续时间他们在监狱中的时间，以及监狱如何将围绕债务和犯罪的侵权解决方案纳入法律基础设施。这里使用“子宫监狱”一词来描述西非监狱如何囚禁血统，威胁女性亲属的怀孕作为侵权解决的滴答作响的时钟。此外，还将表明该机构对于商业资本主义在 19 世纪黄金海岸的传播至关重要。