From Confinement to Ẹlẹ́wọ̀n: Standing after Custody and Southern Criminological Theory in Southwestern Nigeria

This article asks what reintegration theory becomes when return after custody is theorised from southwestern Nigeria. Its starting point is the mismatch between legal completion and social standing. A person may be acquitted, discharged or released after sentence and still remain socially read through custody. The article develops a Southern criminological theory of standing after custody through the Yoruba concepts of ẹlẹ́wọ̀n and Ọmọlúwàbí. Ẹlẹ́wọ̀n names the durable social status that custody may produce. Ọmọlúwàbí names the moral criterion by which the fall is recognised and the visible conduct through which return may be tested. Colonial imprisonment fused with an older Yoruba economy of marking and repair and produced a third condition, a person returned to the community without completed repair and without expulsion. Reacceptance therefore depends on continuing social labour, recognition and vouching within a moral economy of reputation and repair.

ẹlẹ́wọ̀n, Ọmọlúwàbí, standing after custody, moral economy

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