Convicts in Australia
The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 17th century. When transportation ended with the start of the American Revolution, an alternative site was needed to relieve further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks. Earlier in 1770, James Cook charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Britain. Seeking to pre-empt the French colonial empire from expanding into the region, Britain chose Australia as the site of a penal colony, and in 1787, the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay, arriving on 20 January 1788 to found Sydney, New South Wales, the first European settlement on the continent. Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803 and Queensland in 1824, while Western Australia, founded in 1829 as a free colony, received convicts from 1850. South Australia and Victoria, established in 1836 and 1850 respectively, remained free colonies. Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s and dropped off significantly the following decade as protests against the convict system intensified throughout the colonies. In 1868, almost two decades after transportation to the eastern colonies had ceased, the last convict ship arrived in Western Australia.
History of Fremantle Prison
Significant reform to Western Australia's prison system – new prisons, legislation, and administration – did not begin until the 1960s, lagging behind those that occurred in Europe, North America, and elsewhere in Australia after World War II. Seven new prisons were opened between 1960 and 1971, including a maximum-security facility at Albany, following an abrupt increase in the prisoner population in the mid- to late-1950s. In 1970, female prisoners and staff were moved from Fremantle to the new Bandyup Women's Prison, built at Bandyup on the outskirts of Perth. The female division, which had been the only women's prison in Western Australia, was subsequently used for male prisoners. New legislation regarding probation, parole, and convicted drunkards was also introduced, which provided alternatives to imprisonment. With these new arrangements, and more variety in prisons and prison types, a classification board was set up in 1963 to assess prisoners.
The appointment of Colin Campbell as comptroller general in 1966 fostered substantial changes within Fremantle Prison itself. A university graduate with a major in psychology, he was the first senior appointment from outside the Western Australian prison system in almost half a century. He viewed prison as "a place for rehabilitation and re-education ... where people can retain their identity and, if necessary, create a new identity". One of his first changes was to make himself chairman of the classification committee, and clear its backlog of prisoners awaiting assessment through more frequent committee meetings. Campbell also established an officer training school, as well as an assessment centre, where new prisoners worked, supervised by specially trained officers who gave reports to the classification committee. Following international trends, Campbell introduced work release and community service programs, training programs for both prisoners and officers, and social workers and welfare officers to assist prisoners and their families during and after their imprisonment.