Breaking Bad? Gangs, masculinities and murder in Trinidad

The murder rate in Port of Spain, Trinidad, rose dramatically around the turn of the millennium, driven overwhelmingly by young men in gangs in the city’s poor neighborhoods. The literature frequently suggests a causal relationship between gang violence and rising transnational drug flows through Trinidad during this period. However, this is only part of a complex picture and misses the crucial mediating effect of evolving male identities in contexts of pronounced exclusion. Using original data, this article argues that historically marginalized “social terrains” are particularly vulnerable to violence epidemics when exposed to the influence of transnational drug and gun trafficking. When combined with easily available weapons, contextually constructed male hegemonic orders that resonate with the past act as catalysts for contemporary gang violence within those milieus. The study contributes a new empirical body of work on urban violence in Trinidad and the first masculinities-specific analysis of this phenomenon. We argue that contemporary gang culture is a historically rooted, contextually legitimated, male hegemonic street project in the urban margins of Port of Spain

Asymmetric synthesis of bicyclic pyrazolidinones through alkaloid-catalyzed [3 + 2]-cycloadditions of ketenes and azomethine imines

A versatile asymmetric synthesis of bicyclic pyrazolidinones through alkaloid-catalyzed formal [3 + 2]- and [3 + 2 + 2]-cycloadditions of ketenes with azomethine imines is described. The methodology was found to be tolerant of ketene and a variety of monosubstituted ketenes (R = alkyl, OAc). The products were formed in good to excellent yields (71-99% for 24 examples, 39 examples in all), with good to excellent diastereoselectivity in many cases (dr 3:1 to 27:1 for 22 examples), and with excellent enantioselectivity for most examples (≥93% ee for 34 products). In the case of most disubstituted ketenes, the reaction proceeded through a [3 + 2 + 2]-cycloaddition to form structurally interesting bicyclic pyrazolo-oxadiazepinediones with moderate diastereoselectivity (dr up to 3.7:1) and as racemic mixtures (3 examples). The method represents the first unambiguous example of an enantioselective reaction between ketenes and a 1,3-dipole

Student Recital (May 2, 2014)

Etude No. 62 / Mitchell Peters Nicole Desmarais, timpani Malagueña from Spanish Dances, Op. 21 / Pablo de Sarasate Carla Mason, violin Valse Venezolano No. 2 / Antonio Lauro Michael Cirino, guitar Ballade / Albert Périlhou Nicole Mount, flute Etude No. 8 / Heitor Villa-Lobos Dylan Mowry, guitar Sicilienne and Rigaudon / Fritz Kreisler Tempo di Allegretto and Allegro Megan Polk, violin Cavatine, Op. 144 / Camile Saint-Saëns Cody O’Toole, trombone Concerto No. 1 in A minor / Jean Baptiste Accolaÿ Gail Colombo, violin Das Wohltemperierte Klavier II, BWV 886 / Johann Sebastian Bach Prelude and Fugue in Ab Major Jiaying Zhu, piano Cello Suite No. 1, BWV 1007 / J. S. Bach Prelude Killian Kerrigan, guitar El Colibri / Julio S. Sagreras Brian Picher, guitar Maria Wiegenlied / Max Reger Se Tu M’ami / Giovanni Battista Pergolesi Brooke Speigel, soprano Nocturnal After John Dowland / Benjamin Britten Passacaglia and Theme Jim Davidson, guitar Spring / Ivor Gurney Lied Der Mignon, D. 877, No. 3 / Franz Schubert Mackenzie Leahy, soprano Ma Mère L’oye (Mother Goose Suite) / Maurice Ravel Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant (Lent) Petit Poucet. (Très modéré) Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes ( Mouvement de marche) Jiaying Zhu, piano Alexander Heinrich, piano Waltz in Db Major, Op. 64, No. 1 / Frederic Chopin Brenner Campos, piano Three Songs Without Words / Paul Ben-Haim Arioso Ballad Shepardic Melody Colby DeWitt, alto saxophone For You There is No Song / Leslie Adams Deborah / Gene Bone Justine Smigel, sopranohttps://vc.bridgew.edu/student_concerts/1065/thumbnail.jp

Crime, criminality, and North-to-South criminological complexities: Theoretical implications for policing 'hotspot' communities in ‘underdeveloped' countries

This chapter explores the dangers of designing policies using force-to-fit Northern theories falling short in their considerations of social and cultural diversities, context, and social actors. It does this by highlighting the importance of considering the social and cultural ideologies of ‘othered’ groups on the ‘margins’ as relevant to criminological discussions and presenting the general complexities of North-to-South policing policy transfer. Marginalized communities in underdeveloped societies with diasporic histories and culturally unique positions on crime and criminality are presented as a context for understanding the complexity of policing policies which are informed by Northern ideological positioning. This chapter is applicable both to the Southern criminology project and to epistemic decolonialization more generally as it adds to the discourse on expanding transnational policing agendas

Recordkeeping and the Management of Prisons in Guyana

Learning about prison management in Guyana since independence in 1966 is fraught with difficulty due to the paucity of surviving records. This paper investigates attitudes towards and practices of recordkeeping in order to start developing a historical sociology of recordkeeping in Guyana. Within this framework, prison recordkeeping is explored for the colonial and post-independence periods. The paper ends with a consideration of other sources and methods that are needed to provide a fuller picture of both prison management and the experiences had in prison by prisoners and prison officers

Coloniality and Mental Health, Neurological and Substance Abuse (MNS) Disorders in Guyana’s Prisons Today

There is a relationship between the social actions and social structures laid down during colonialism, and the social hierarchies and inequalities that developed as British Guiana moved slowly from British colony to Independent Guyana. From slavery and indigenous marginalisation, to indentureship and colonial social relations, modern Guyana emerges from the legacies of an Imperial project, and most notably “enslavement, immigration, and population management” (Anderson 2019). In the context of Guyana’s prisons today, the echoes and ghosts of this Imperial project can be said to still haunt the grounds and insides of these decaying buildings, as well as stalking the lives and minds of inmates themselves

The Gaols of Guyana: Hauntology and Trauma in the soundscape of Prison

Using Hauntology, this paper illustrates how the supposed demise of a socio-political and economic system – colonialism – still impacts on and has something to offer contemporary political analysis in Guyana’s gaols. Drawing on Fiddler’s spatio-hauntology alongside the work of Derrida and Gordon this paper shows how hauntology provides an alternative theoretical framework to look at the intergenerational transmission of trauma, which can be traced back to colonialism and slavery. It acknowledges the impact structural violence has on the collective imaginary and how this – consciously and unconsciously – shapes the psychosocial material underpinning contemporary Guyanese identities, desires, experiences, social action, and systems of punishment which includes prisons – its buildings, space, regimes, processes, sounds, laws and rationale. Guyana’s prisons contain phantoms of the past. Only by acknowledging Guyana’s ghosts and the phantasm of past trauma is it that we can begin to understand contemporary Guyana and Guyanese society, which includes their jails

Contemporary Substance Use in Guyana: The Prison Context

Substance use in contemporary Guyana cannot be dismantled from the historical introduction and control of substances across the British Empire, and this is true in the community as it is in prison. In a form of transhistorical repetition, some of the substances being used have changed since colonial times, but many have also stayed the same, as have the reasons for their use. This paper follows on from ‘the History of Substance Use and Control in British Guiana’ (Moss and Toner, 2020) and explores semi-structured prisoner interviews among a group of male prisoners, which shows that substance use in prison – as in the community - is often a coping mechanism, as well as a way to pass time, escape and alleviate the pains of imprisonment. In this sense substance use is an adaptive strategy to the micro level experiences of transhistorical processes, such as social control, the development of class and ethnic politics, and were central to the nexus of exploitative social and labour relationships on colonial plantations

Outreach into prisons and constructing a “usable past” of Guyana’s prisons

This workshop and the attached info-graphic (created by   Laura Evans-Hill at Nifty Fox) formed part of the conference Imperial Genealogies of Crime (17th -18th May & 24th - 25th May, 2022). For images from the conference please visit: Imperial Genealogies of Crime by Nifty Fox Creative (pixieset.com)  Workshop Abstract: This workshop introduces people to the possibilities and challenges of doing research projects that connect historical and present-day issues in prisons, especially working with external partners and in postcolonial settings. What value can historical research have in terms of understanding, and even reforming prison systems today? How can we analyse inheritances of colonialism in penal policy to create a “usable past” for independent post-colonial nations? This session is led by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from history and criminology, working on an ESRC/AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund collaboration between the University of Guyana and the University of Leicester, in partnership with the Guyana Prison Service. The project examines the relationships, connections, and continuities of mental, neurological and substance abuse (MNS) disorders in Guyana’s jails: both among inmates and the people who work with them from the British colonial period (1814-1966) to the present day. Following an introduction to the project participants will engage directly in analysing evidence about prison conditions, including enquiries, regulations, and images, from the colonial period and post-independence in 1966. This will better enable attendees to understand the historicity of contemporary prison governance and experience, and how this evidence base can be meaningfully analysed to understand present trends. Finally, the workshop will explore some of the many inter-disciplinary partnerships that have emerged from the project, and the harnessing of digital technologies for recent challenges, including the creation of a virtual reality environment of Mazaruni prison and efforts to control and contain the spread of infectious diseases (including Covid-19). About the Convenors: Clare Anderson is Professor History at the University of Leicester, where she is also Director of the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies. Clare’s work focuses on imperial and global histories of punishment. Her publications include Convicts in the Indian Ocean (2000), Subaltern Lives (2012), New Histories of the Andaman Islands (with M. Mazumdar and V. Pandya 2015), the edited volume A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies (2016), and Convicts: A Global History (2022). Clare is currently working on two interdisciplinary projects. The first, an ESRC GCRF partnership between the University of Leicester, University of Guyana, and Guyana Prison Service, is exploring the aftermaths of colonial rule in regard to the infrastructure, operation and experience of incarceration in Guyana, for inmates and the people who work with them. The second, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, is exploring descent and descendants of black, Asian, Indigenous and Creole convicts transported to penal colony sites across the British and French Empires, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Dylan Kerrigan is an anthropologist working on the sociology of crime and punishment primarily in the Caribbean but also the UK and USA. He is part of the ESRC MNS Guyana research team. Dylan applies a variety of qualitative methods to explore how power relations of criminal justice systems under capitalism are experienced on the micro level of human experiences. In this context his interdisciplinary research explores coloniality and the punishment of capital in the Caribbean across various in/justice systems including prisons, court systems, transnational organised crime, youth gangs, white collar crime, and securitisation. His academic work has been published in top-tier peer reviewed journals including the Journal of Latin and Caribbean Anthropology, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Caribbean Quarterly, the Journal of Legal Anthropology, Consumption and Markets, and the Caribbean Journal of Criminology. He is currently a lecturer in criminology at the University of Leicester, UK. Kellie Moss is a Research Associate at the University of Leicester, working on the history of mental health and substance abuse in the colonial prisons of British Guiana. She was awarded a PhD in 2018 for her thesis on the global mobilities and integration of coerced labourers in nineteenth-century Western Australia, including indentured servants, apprenticed juvenile emigrants, convict labourers, and Indigenous peoples. Kellie is co-author of ‘Guyana’s Prisons: Colonial Histories of Post-Colonial Challenges’ (2020), in a special issue of The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice.</p