This article analyses the role coerced intermediaries had on colonial power and authority in the prisons of British India. Coerced intermediaries in this context were convicts placed in positions of control by the colonial prison administration as warders, overseers, and night watchmen and night watchwomen, summarized here under the term “convict officers”. These convict officers were employed by the colonial authorities to maintain a coercive order and became essential to the exercise of colonial authority and control in the prisons of British India. The article argues that with their employment, the colonial administration created a third group within its prisons, situated between the colonial administration and the inmates. This contradictory practice blurred the lines of colonial control and authority and raises larger questions about intermediation by unfree and coerced people in unfree and coerced colonial contexts. The focus here is not so much on what intermediation is but on what it does. At the same time, the article relates the system of convict officers as intermediaries to the theoretical concepts used by Foucault and Goffman and questions the binarity used in most of their theories.

本文分析了在英属印度监狱中受胁迫的中介对殖民权力和权威的作用。在这种情况下，被胁迫的中间人是被殖民地监狱管理部门置于控制位置的罪犯，作为看守、监督者、守夜人和守夜人，在这里被概括为“囚犯官员”一词。这些囚犯受雇于殖民当局以维持强制性秩序，并成为英属印度监狱中行使殖民当局和控制权所必不可少的。文章认为，通过雇佣他们，殖民政府在其监狱内创建了第三个群体，位于殖民政府和囚犯之间。这种自相矛盾的做法模糊了殖民控制和权威的界限，并引发了关于在不自由和胁迫的殖民环境中由不自由和胁迫的人民进行调解的更大问题。这里的重点不在于中介是什么，而在于它做了什么。同时，文章将刑警中介制度与福柯和戈夫曼所使用的理论概念联系起来，质疑他们大部分理论所使用的二元性。