Introduction /Rufus Akinyele and Ton Dietz --Stephen Ellis: his life and work /Gerrie ter Haar --Theft in early colonial Lagos, 1861-1906 /Paul Osifodunrin --Smuggling across the Nigeria-Benin border and its impact on Nigeria's economic development /Jackson A. Aluede --Changing patterns of crime and malfeasance in Nigerian port environments since the 1990s /Edmund Chilaka --Nature and management of human trafficking: the Nigerian Edo people's experience /Leo Otoide --Militancy and criminality in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria /Abiodun Oluwadare --Crime at the University of Lagos: insights from Akoka campus /Franca Attoh --Reporting crime in contemporary Lagos /Samson Folarin --Currency counterfeiting and "substantial justice" in colonial Nigeria: Rex vs Tijani Ali, 1931-33 /Ayodeji Olukoju --Class based criminal justice regime, supermarket courts, and illicit interests: the Nigerian criminal justice administration system in critical perspective /A.E. Akintayo --Book review. This present darkness: a history of Nigerian organised crime authored by Stephen Ellis (London: Hurst and Co, 2016) /Ayo Atsenuwa

A pioneering book on prisons in West Africa, Colonial Systems of Control: Criminal Justice in Nigeria is the first comprehensive presentation of life inside a West African prison. Chapters by prisoners inside Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos, Nigeria are published alongside chapters by scholars and activists. While prisoners document the daily realities and struggles of life inside a Nigerian prison, scholar and human rights activist Viviane Saleh-Hanna provides historical, political, and academic contexts and analyses of the penal system in Nigeria. The European penal models and institutions imported to Nigeria during colonialism are exposed as intrinsically incoherent with the community-based conflict-resolution principles of most African social structures and justice models. This book presents the realities of imprisonment in Nigeria while contextualizing the colonial legacies that have resulted in the inhumane brutalities that are endured on a daily basis. Keywords: Nigeria, West Africa, penal system, maximum-security prison. Published in English.