Penal Policy-Making and British Imperialism: The Colonial Office and Kenya, c. 1930–52

In the late 1930s, the Colonial Office underwent a reorganization aimed at increasing British imperial coherence and establishing London as a policy-making force. In the sphere of punishment, these goals were primarily pursued through the formation of a Treatment of Offenders Committee (TOC). The thinking of TOC members echoed the discourse preeminent among domestic policymakers, which stressed that punishment should be reformative. Between 1937 and 1952, the Committee pursued extensive changes to colonial practices through knowledge production and control. However, in direct engagements about policies, members’ reformist principles were crosscut by ideas about how best to stimulate change and perceptions of the development of colonized populations, resulting in a tentative and sometimes ambivalent approach. Consequently, local colonial officials retained significant policy-making power across the period, albeit in an intellectual context the Colonial Office was working hard to reorientate. These points and their implications are elaborated through an analysis of penal policy-making in Kenya. The white settler-dominated colony had an unusually harsh penal system and was a persistent anxiety and focus for the TOC. Colonial Office efforts led to a rhetorical reorientation of Kenyan penal policy after 1938 and stimulated some practical changes. However, success was limited, with key metropolitan proposals rejected either directly or through the reworking of reformist discourse by Kenyan officials. Overall, the weakness of the TOC enabled the persistence of a harsh penal system in Kenya alongside the development of an official culture well versed in avoiding metropolitan calls for change.