This urban ethnography of violence in intimate relationships in Sierra Leone reveals its multifaceted nature, gender dynamics, and the complex interplay of domestic, community, and state interventions. It challenges victim–perpetrator narratives by highlighting relationship violence’s complexities, such as its use for expressing love or punishment. The study contextualises violence within Sierra Leone’s historical and geopolitical framework, emphasising the interaction of structural violence with local contexts. It examines women’s agency in relation to violence and the co-existence of love and violence in the society’s moral economy. Gendered aspects of violence show differences in how men and women perceive and enact violence. The study analyses community and family mediations of violence and discusses how especially men face barriers towards state reporting. State laws greatly impact sexual relationships involving minors, shaping young people’s lives, household formation, education, and social relations. In challenging conventional perspectives, the book provides valuable insights for policy-makers and scholars.

The conclusion draws together the main themes from the book as a whole. It highlights the multitude of experiences behind bars, gendered differences in the structure and experiences of prisons, and changes in practice and policies over time. It emphasises women’s agency and survival strategies both during incarceration and on the outside. This conclusion also draws attention to the insights offered on women’s relationships with each other and with their wider families and their roles as mothers, daughters, sisters and wives or partners. The conclusion also reminds us that women established and maintained positive and negative relationships with the staff charged to manage them.