Willing Prisoners of Port Louis
How many stories could the crumbling walls of the old prison in Port Louis tell? Few would be surprised if they were stories of regret and despair for misdeeds which led to incarceration. But those emotions only tell part of the story. More curious is the relief some prisoners must have felt as they entered the prison for the first time, for theirs are the largely untold stories of the willing prisoners who chose prison as an escape from the hardships of the plantations.
The old prison of Port Louis first opened in 1839 during a time of significant change in labour in Mauritius. Officially, slavery had been abolished, but in reality, most of the once enslaved people were still tied to their former owners through forced apprenticeships which amounted to slavery under a different name. At its peak, hundreds of these enslaved people and other indentured workers were held captive behind the prison walls. Some even paid the ultimate price, meeting their demise on the gallows within the prison walls.
Life in prison was far from easy. Prisoners were used as forced labour to build roads, bridges, military forts, and other public works needed by the emerging nation of Mauritius. Cells were desperately overcrowded, requiring authorities to build additional cells immediately after the prison opened. And yet, despite the austere nature of the prison, living conditions were often better than those of the plantation fields.
As a public institution, the prison was held accountable for the welfare of prisoners in ways private plantations, which were largely left alone to treat or mistreat their workers as they pleased, never were. This scrutiny resulted in greater meal portions and restrictions on the severity of the forced labour prisoners undertook. It was a situation which led to the spectacle of plantation workers absconding, despite knowing that doing so could mean their incarceration in prison. They became the willing prisoners who chose life behind bars over life in the fields.
Today, the prison lies abandoned in the heart of the capital, largely ignored by the crowds of people who walk by daily. It has been relegated to little more than a storage facility for broken office desks and obsolete computer equipment piled high in the cells. And yet the voices of the prisoners still seem to cry out from walls which can't speak, hoping to be heard.
