Abstract
This chapter shows how, in the global South, penal dynamics has been ordered by a different set of issues and concerns from that to be found in the global North. Using the Pacific island of Tuvalu as an illustration, it shows how in fact such societies have largely escaped the supposed ‘global firestorm of law and order’ that has preoccupied much Northern scholarship. Instead, it has been possible to maintain very low levels of imprisonment. As is now the case on Tuvalu, though, this is imperilled by other factors stemming from ‘the North’ that have undermined its traditional way of life and mode of dispute resolution: economic liberalization, climate change, and the imposition of human rights that undermine chiefly authority.
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Notes
- 1.
Tuvalu has only one airport with an open airstrip, located on Funafuti Island (capital). The planes only come from Fiji twice a week in the afternoons. Thus, ‘it is safe to sleep on the airstrip which normally has a pleasant, cooling breeze’ (Panapa 2014: 199).
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Pratt, J., Melei, T. (2018). One of the Smallest Prison Populations in the World Under Threat: The Case of Tuvalu. In: Carrington, K., Hogg, R., Scott, J., Sozzo, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65021-0_35
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