Was Australia a prison colony?
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.
Architecture of Fremantle Prison
Fremantle Prison dates from the early years of European settlement, when it was constructed as the centre of the British Imperial Convict Establishment in Western Australia. While the colony was established as a "free settlement" in 1829, by the 1840s the early reluctance to accept Britain's convicts was overcome. Cheap convict labour could overcome the significant shortage of manpower in the colony. However, the arrival of the first convict ship "Scindian" on 2 June 1850 was unexpected. While a sailing ship had been sent ahead to inform of the pending arrival of seventy-five convicts, it had been blown off course. The Round House was full to capacity, almost overflowing, so the convicts had to be left on the ship. There was also no prepared accommodation for the warders, pensioner guards, Captain Edward Walcott Henderson, Comptroller General of Convicts, or his clerk, James Manning. Rents for accommodation in Fremantle quickly rose due to the sudden increase in demand, leaving Henderson paying more for his basic lodgings in Fremantle than for his house in London. Eventually Henderson leased two properties in Essex Street for £250 per year, at the site of the modern-day Esplanade Hotel. He used his convicts to convert the buildings into a temporary prison. Meanwhile, Henderson was looking for a site to build a permanent convict establishment. Whilst he favoured Mount Eliza (now known as Kings Park) due to its height, which gave it pleasing vistas and supposedly healthier air, Governor Charles Fitzgerald rejected that proposal. Henderson ultimately settled on the current site on a hill, in a raised and dominant position overlooking the port city of Fremantle.
Crime in Australia
During the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, large numbers of convicts were transported to the various by the UK Government. One of the primary reasons for the British settlement of Australia was the establishment of a penal colony to alleviate pressure on their overburdened correctional facilities. Over a period of eighty years, more than 165,000 British convicts were transported to Australia.
Discipline was poor among the early convicts, with high rates of theft, physical and sexual assault. Law enforcement was initially the preserve of the New South Wales Marine Corps, which accompanied the First Fleet. Australia's first civilian crime prevention force was established in August 1789, comprising a twelve-man nightwatch authorised to patrol the settlement at Sydney Cove and with powers "for the apprehending and securing for examination" anyone suspected of "felony, trespass or misdemeanour."
History of Fremantle Prison
The history of Fremantle Prison, a former Australian prison in Fremantle, Western Australia, extends from its construction as a prison for convicts, using convict labour, in the 1850s, through to its modern-day usage as a tourist attraction. The design for Fremantle Prison was based on the Pentonville Prison in Britain, and it would be the longest, tallest prison cell block in the southern hemisphere. Construction began in 1851, and was completed by the end of 1859. The prison was transferred to the colonial government in 1886 for use for locally sentenced prisoners. Following a Royal Commission held in 1898−99, some changes were made to Fremantle Prison, including knocking down the inner wall between two cells, introducing a prisoner classification system, and constructing internal walls in the main block to create four separate divisions. A new cell block, New Division, was completed in 1907 and occupied in 1908.
J Ward
J Ward originally the Ararat County Gaol, was an Australian prison, of the latter a psychiatric facility to house the criminally insane, located in Ararat, Victoria, Australia.
List of prisons in Australia
This is a list of operational and former Australian prisons for adult males and females and youth detention centres for juveniles. Prisons listed as "museum" are former prisons that are now open for public inspection and tours.
Convict era of Western Australia
Effects of the convict era continued to be felt for many years. In 1874, Western Australia's Legislative Council lobbied the British government for responsible government but were refused, the grounds for refusal including that the proportion of ex-convicts in the colony was too high.
Convict era of Western Australia
Western Australia's convict era only came to an end with the cessation of penal transportation by Britain. In May 1865, the colony was advised of the change in British policy, and told that Britain would send one convict ship in each of the years 1865, 1866 and 1867, after which transportation would cease. In accordance with this, the last convict ship to Western Australia, the "Hougoumont", departed Britain in 1867 and arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868.
Colonial forces of Australia
South Australia was the only British colony in Australia which was not a convict colony. It was established as a planned free colony, and began on 28 December 1836. As such, garrisons were not required as prison guards, unlike the other colonies. However, Governor John Hindmarsh was escorted on the HMS "Buffalo" by a contingent of nineteen Royal Marines. They were assigned to protect him and left South Australia when he departed the colony on the HMS "Alligator" on 14 July 1838. A lack of any form of defence however, led to the creation of the Royal South Australian Volunteer Militia, consisting of an infantry company and two cavalry troops, in 1840, although it was disbanded in 1851; for the final six years of its existence it had been a force that had existed on paper only. The first artillery pieces arrived in South Australia aboard "Buffalo", which landed two 18-pound cannons, but initially there were no moves to form an artillery unit, so the guns were operated by Royal Engineers. In 1844 a request for further pieces was sent to the British government and two years later two light 6-pounders, two 12-pounder howitzers and two Cohorn mortars arrived with an ammunition store of about 500 rounds for each weapon type.
The Colony (2005 TV series)
The Colony is a reality television program in which two modern families from Britain and Ireland try to survive in the conditions of New South Wales, Australia 200 years ago when it was a penal colony (of the period 1795 to 1815). Together with an Australian family and Aborigines they learn just how tough you needed to be to survive back then.
Punishment in Australia
Modern prison privatisation began in the U.S. and Australia followed shortly thereafter. On the 2nd of January 1990, Borallon Correctional Centre opened as the first private prison in Australia, located in Queensland. Borallon was managed by the Corrections Company of Australia (which was owned by John Holland Group, Wormald International and Corrections Corporation of America). In 2007 Serco won the bid to take over the prison. In 2012 Borallon closed. In 2016 it reopened as a government-operated prison.
Colony of Queensland
The Colony of Queensland was a colony of the British Empire from 1859 to 1901, when it became a State in the federal Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. At its greatest extent, the colony included the present-day State of Queensland, the Territory of Papua and the Coral Sea Islands Territory.
Prison ship
Between 1824 and 1837 "Phoenix" served as a prison hulk in Sydney Harbour. She held convicts awaiting transportation to Norfolk Island and Moreton Bay. One sources claims she was Australia's first prison hulk.
European Australians
Several states and territories had their origins as penal colonies, with the first British convicts arriving at Sydney Cove in 1788. Stories of outlaws like the bushranger Ned Kelly have endured in Australian music, cinema and literature. The Australian gold rushes from the 1850s brought wealth as well as new social tensions to Australia, including the miners' Eureka Stockade rebellion. The colonies established elected parliaments and rights for workers and women before most other Western nations.
Punishment in Australia
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the indigenous people of Australia - Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders - had their own traditional punishments. These included:New South Wales, as the founding site for British colonisation Australia in 1788, has had prisons for as long as Australia has had European settlement. The first Australian colony was founded at Port Jackson (now Sydney) on 26 January 1788, and marked the commencement of many decades of convict arrivals from the United Kingdom. Penal colonies were also founded in what is now the states of Queensland, Tasmania, and Western Australia.
American Australians
The North American colonies – including both contemporary Canada and the United States – had been used by Britain for penal transportation. With the independence of the United States in the 1770s, the British Government sought new lands to exile convicts, and Australia became the pre-eminent prison colony of the British Empire.
Romanichal
In the years following the American War of Independence, Australia was the preferred destination for Romanichal transportation, due to its use as a penal colony. The exact number of British Romani deported to Australia is unknown. It has been suggested that three Romanichal were present on the First Fleet, one of whom was thought to be James Squire who founded Australia's first commercial brewery in 1798, and whose grandson James Farnell who became the first native-born Premier of New South Wales in 1877. The total Romani population seems to be an extremely low number when we consider that British Romani people made up just 0.01% of the original 162,000 convict population. However, it has been suggested that Romanichal were one of the main target groups and were discriminated against due to the transportation laws of England in the mid-18th century. It is often difficult to distinguish British Romani people of Wales and England from the majority of non-Romani convicts at the time, therefore the precise number of British Romanies transported is not known, although there are occurrences of Romani names and possible families within the convict population; however it is unclear if such people were members of the established Romani community. Fragmentary records do exist and it is thought with confidence at least fifty or more British Romanies may have been transported to Australia, although the actual figure could be higher. What is clear is that such deportation (as for all convicts) was particularly harsh:
History of Braidwood, New South Wales
NSW in the 1820s and 30s was still primarily a penal colony. The British Government was determined that it should be seen as a place of punishment and so act as a deterrent against crime, and frequent directives to the NSW Governor attempted to make the administration in the colony more severe and effective. Transportation itself was the primary punishment, but a series of secondary punishments were thought to be necessary to control the large convict population in a "jail without walls".
Hay Internment and POW camps
The Hay Internment and POW camps at Hay, New South Wales, Australia were established during World War II as prisoner-of-war and internment centres, due in no small measure to the isolated location of the town. Three high-security camps were constructed in 1940.  The first arrivals were over two thousand refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria, most of whom were Jewish; they had been interned in the United Kingdom when fears of an armed invasion of Britain were at their peak. The British government then made the decision to forcibly transport these refugees to Australia on the HMT "Dunera".  The internees were kept in conditions on board the Dunera that were cruel and inhumane, and after the war the Dunera story became quite infamous, leading the British government to apologise for their egregious mistreatment of innocent civilian refugees. The internees arrived at Hay on 7 September 1940 by four trains from Sydney.  They were interned in Camps 7 and 8 (located near the Hay showground) under the guard of the 16th Garrison Battalion of the Australian Army.  In November 1940 the other compound at Hay, Camp 6 (near the Hay Hospital), was occupied by Italian civilian internees.  Camps 7 and 8 were vacated in May 1941 when the "Dunera" internees left Hay; some were sent to Orange (NSW), others to Tatura in Victoria, and others to join the Pioneer Corps of the Australian Army.  Upon their departure Italian prisoners-of-war were placed in Camps 7 and 8.  In December 1941 Japanese internees (some from Broome and islands north of Australia) were conveyed to Hay and placed in Camp 6.  In April 1942 the River Farm began operating on the eastern edge of the township, enabling market-gardening and other farm activities to be carried out by the Italian internees and POWs.  In February 1945, in the wake of the Cowra POW break-out, a large number of Japanese POWs were transferred to Hay and placed in the three high-security compounds.  On 1 March 1946 the Japanese POWs departed from Hay in five trains, transferred to Tatura.  During 1946 the Italians who remained at Hay were progressively released or transferred to other camps, and the Hay camps were dismantled and building materials and fittings sold off by June the following year.
Constitutional history of Australia
During the 19th century, separate British colonies were formed in Australia. In 1825, Tasmania, named Van Diemen's Land, was proclaimed a separate colony from the colony of New South Wales. The Swan River Colony of Western Australia was established in 1832, separately from that of New South Wales, effectively taking over by Britain of the remainder of the Australian continent. Following the Treaty of Waitangi, William Hobson declared British sovereignty over New Zealand in 1840 and was part of the colony of New South Wales. In 1841, it was separated from the colony of New South Wales to form the new Colony of New Zealand. South Australia was formed in 1836 separately of the colony of New South Wales, and Victoria in 1851 and Queensland in 1859 both from the colony of New South Wales. By Letters Patent on 6 June 1859, Queen Victoria gave her approval to the separation of the colony of Queensland from New South Wales. On the same day an Order-in-Council gave Queensland its own Constitution. Queensland became a self-governing colony with its own Governor, a nominated Legislative Council and an elected Legislative Assembly. South Australia was founded as a "free province"—it was never a penal colony. Victoria and Western Australia were also founded "free", but later accepted transported convicts. A campaign by the settlers of New South Wales led to the end of convict transportation to that colony; the last convict ship arrived in 1848.
New Australia
Paraguay was chosen as the site of the settlement. Lane recruited many, and the first ship left Sydney in July 1893 for Paraguay, where the government was keen to get white settlers and had offered the group a large area of good land. While it is generally agreed that there were some able settlers, there seems to be some disagreement about the character of the New Australia settlers as a whole. It has been described as a Cave of Adullam to misfits, failures, and malcontents of the left wing of Australian democracy. Notable Australian individuals who joined the colony included Mary Gilmore, Rose Summerfield, Gilbert Stephen Casey and George Birks and his family. 
But according to M. de C. Findlay, the Second Secretary of the Legation at Buenos Aires, who was sent to the colony by the British Consul at Asunction, they were, "a fine class of men." Men were required to pay a minimum of £60 (but including all their assets) to join the colony, a sum large enough in 1893 Australia to usually require the selling of a home, so complete failures would have been necessarily excluded.
Penal transportation
In 1787, the "First Fleet" of convict ships departed from England to establish the first British settlement in Australia, as a penal colony. The fleet arrived at Port Jackson (Sydney) on 26 January 1788, a date now celebrated as Australia Day. Norfolk Island was a convict penal settlement from 1788–94, and again from 1824-47. The First Fleet included boats containing food and animals from London. The ships and boats of the fleet would explore the coast of Australia by sailing all around it looking for suitable farming land and resources. In 1803, Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania) was also settled as a penal colony, followed by the Moreton Bay Settlement (Queensland) in 1824. The other Australian colonies were "free settlements", as non-convict colonies were known. However, the Swan River Colony (Western Australia) accepted transportation from England and Ireland in 1851, to resolve a long-standing labour shortage. Until the massive influx of immigrants during the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s, the free settlers had been outnumbered by English and Irish convicts and their descendants. However, compared to America, Australia received many more English prisoners.
Fremantle
When the first 75 convicts arrived from Britain in 1850 to support the colony's dwindling population, it became apparent that the Round House was inadequate to house them. The convicts built a new gaol, Fremantle Prison, which was completed in the 1850s and continued to be used as Fremantle's prison until 1991. Fremantle Prison was once one of the most notorious prisons in the British Empire. It housed British convicts, local prisoners, military prisoners, enemy aliens and prisoners of war. On 1 August 2010, a meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Brazil placed Fremantle Prison and 10 other "Australian Convict Sites" on the World Heritage List - making it the first built environment in Western Australia to be bestowed this honour. It continues to be accessible to the public for guided tours and as a venue for artistic and cultural activities.
History of Australia
Gold rushes and agricultural industries brought prosperity. Autonomous parliamentary democracies began to be established throughout the six British colonies from the mid-19th century. The colonies voted by referendum to unite in a federation in 1901, and modern Australia came into being. Australia fought on the side of Britain in the two world wars and became a long-standing ally of the United States when threatened by Imperial Japan during World War II. Trade with Asia increased and a post-war immigration program received more than 6.5 million migrants from every continent. Supported by immigration of people from more than 200 countries since the end of World War II, the population increased to more than 23 million by 2014, and sustains the world's 12th largest national economy.
History of Australia
With the exception of further Dutch visits to the west, however, Australia remained largely unvisited by Europeans until the first British explorations. John Callander put forward a proposal in 1766 for Britain to found a colony of banished convicts in the South Sea or in Terra Australis to enable the mother country to exploit the riches of those regions. He said: "this world must present us with many things entirely new, as hitherto we have had little more knowledge of it, than if it had lain in another planet".
Convict women in Australia
The Parramatta female factory was the first built in Australia and was located in Parramatta, New South Wales. The factory had room for only a third of the female prisoners; the rest had to find lodgings with the local settlers at some cost (usually about four shillings a week). Many women could only pay for this cost by offering sexual services. Their customers were usually the male convicts who came and left the factory as they pleased.
Constitutional history of Australia
Soon after Lord Sydney appointed him governor, Phillip drew up a detailed memorandum of his plans for the proposed new colony. In one paragraph he wrote: "The laws of this country [England] will of course, be introduced in [New] South Wales, and there is one that I would wish to take place from the moment his Majesty's forces take possession of the country: That there can be no slavery in a free land, and consequently no slaves." Actual white European settlement commenced with the arrival of the First Fleet, comprising 11 ships which arrived at Botany Bay, New South Wales between 18 and 20 January 1788. The Fleet brought a total of 1044 people to the new settlement, of whom 696 were convicts. The actual settlement was located at Sydney Cove. The colony was formally proclaimed by Governor Phillip on 7 February 1788 at Sydney. However, though the settlement was a military prison, and Phillip had full power as governor, the colony also had a civil administration and courts of law.
History of Western Australia
Sheep farming was the most successful early agricultural activity, and the basis of all expansion until the 1850s.While Western Australia was initially a "free settlement", economic problems for settler capitalists led them to seek the transportation of British convicts. WA became a penal colony in 1850.
History of Australia
At the same time, humanitarians and reformers were campaigning in Britain against the appalling conditions in British prisons and hulks. In 1777 prison reformer John Howard wrote "The State of Prisons in England and Wales", exposing the harsh conditions of the prison system to "genteel society". Penal transportation was already well-established as a central plank of English criminal law and until the American Revolution about a thousand criminals per year were sent to Maryland and Virginia. It served as a powerful deterrent to law-breaking. According to historian David Hill, "Europeans knew little about the geography of the globe" and to "convicts in England, transportation to Botany Bay was a frightening prospect". Echoing John Callander, he said Australia "might as well have been another planet".
Berrima Internment Camp Huts Area
Based on the British Government's concentration camp model during the Boer War (1899-1902), the Australian government adopted the principal by setting up concentration camps in each of the six States to intern the "alien enemy". By early 1915 there were almost 3,000 German internees in Australia. In order to aid communication between camps, to cut costs and to standardise the rules in terms of the treatment of prisoners, the concentration camps were closed in all States other than NSW and all internees were transferred facilities with the State. It was a long and unpleasant journey for many internees who travelled to NSW, some were handcuffed and some were treated roughly by officials.
Private prison
Australia opened its first private prison, Borallon Correctional Centre, in 1990.
Hanging
Capital punishment was a part of the Legal system of Australia from its early days as a penal colony for the British Empire, until 1985, when Australia abolished the death penalty in all states; in practice, the last execution in Australia was the hanging of Ronald Ryan on 3 February 1967, in Victoria.
Punishment in Australia
Two penal colonies were briefly founded in the area that is now Victoria. Both were abandoned shortly after. Later, after a free settlement had been established, some convicts were transported to the region.
Coal River Precinct
Coal River, a convict/military settlement for prisoners guilty of colonial offences is one of few such convict settlements in Australia, and was the earliest such settlement. Evidence of convict workplaces, coal mining, pier building, quarrying, and other activities are rare in Australia. The role of British military in the foundation of colonial society is little studied and the example of Coal River could make a valuable contribution to cultural studies. The period of transition from military rule to civil administration is of great interest and educational value and is rare in Australian settlement history and society.
Convicts in Australia
Although a convict-supported settlement was established in Western Australia from 1826 to 1831, direct transportation of convicts did not begin until 1850. It continued until 1868. During that period, 9,668 convicts were transported on 43 convict ships. The first convicts to arrive were transported to New South Wales, and sent by that colony to King George Sound (Albany) in 1826 to help establish a settlement there. At that time the western third of Australia was unclaimed land known as New Holland. Fears that France would lay claim to the land prompted the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, to send Major Edmund Lockyer, with troops and 23 convicts, to establish a settlement at King George Sound. Lockyer's party arrived on Christmas Day, 1826. A convict presence was maintained at the settlement for over four years. On 7 March 1831 control of the settlement was transferred to the Swan River Colony, and the troops and convicts were withdrawn.
Convicts in Australia
Along with bushrangers and other stock characters of colonial life, convicts were a popular subject during Australia's silent film era. The first convict film was a 1908 adaptation of Marcus Clarke's "For the Term of His Natural Life", shot on location at Port Arthur with an unheard-of budget of £7000. This was followed by two more films inspired by Clarke's novel: "The Life of Rufus Dawes" (1911), which draws on Alfred Dampier's stage production of "His Natural Life", and the landmark "For the Term of His Natural Life" (1927), one of the most expensive silent films ever made. W. J. Lincoln directed many convict melodramas including "It Is Never Too Late to Mend" (1911), an adaptation of Charles Reade's 1856 novel about cruelties of the convict system; "Moodyne" (1913), based on John Boyle O'Reilly's novel; and "Transported" (1913). Other early titles include "Sentenced for Life", "The Mark of the Lash", "One Hundred Years Ago", "The Lady Outlaw" and "The Assigned Servant", all released in 1911. Few convict films were made after 1930; even the Australian New Wave of the 1970s, with its emphasis on Australia's colonial past, largely avoided the convict era in favour of nostalgic period pieces set in the bush around the time of Federation. One exception is "Journey Among Women" (1977), a feminist imagining of what life was like for convict women. Alexander Pearce, the infamous Tasmanian convict and cannibal, is the inspiration for "The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce" (2008), "Dying Breed" (2008) and "Van Diemen's Land" (2009).
Convict era of Western Australia
Implicit in Britain's offer was the understanding that the Swan River Colony would not become a regular penal settlement, in which Britain retained responsibility for managing and funding the penal system. Rather, it would take full responsibility for the convicts that it accepted. In February 1849, a public meeting was held to discuss the issue, from which a majority view emerged in support of an alternative proposal put forward by Lionel Samson. Samson argued that the colony needed both labour and capital, and pointed out that under Britain's proposal the colony would effectively become a penal colony but would not receive the usual investment of capital from Britain. In March, Fitzgerald was able to tell the Colonial Office:
Fitzgerald's message was received by the Colonial Office in July 1849. By that time, the Colonial Office had already acted to formally constitute Western Australia as a penal settlement. After receiving Fitzgerald's missive, the Colonial Office decided to send out about 100 convicts under the conditions of the original proposal. When news of this reached the Swan River Colony, the colonists protested that the original proposal was never agreed to by the majority of settlers. They demanded that the British Government either agree to fund the colony's convict establishment, or cancel altogether their plans to send convicts. Eventually the British Government agreed to the colonists' demands for funding, but since the expenditure was not warranted for only 100 convicts, it was decided to greatly increase the number of convicts sent.
History of Australia
The British colony of New South Wales was established with the arrival of the First Fleet of 11 vessels under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip in January 1788. It consisted of over a thousand settlers, including 778 convicts (192 women and 586 men). A few days after arrival at Botany Bay the fleet moved to the more suitable Port Jackson where a settlement was established at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788. This date later became Australia's national day, Australia Day. The colony was formally proclaimed by Governor Phillip on 7 February 1788 at Sydney. Sydney Cove offered a fresh water supply and a safe harbour, which Philip described as being, 'with out exception the finest Harbour in the World [...] Here a Thousand Sail of the Line may ride in the most perfect Security'.
Macquarie Harbour Penal Station
The Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, a former British colonial penal settlement, established on Sarah Island, Macquarie Harbour, in the former colony of Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, operated between 1822 and 1833. The settlement housed mainly male convicts, with a small number of women. During its 11 years of operation, the penal colony achieved a reputation as one of the harshest penal settlements in the Australian colonies. The formal penal station is located on the Sarah Island that now operates as an historic site under the direction of the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service.
HM Prison Beechworth
HM Prison Beechworth, now known as Beechworth Gaol, was a medium security Australian prison located in Beechworth, Victoria, Australia.
Comptroller General of Convicts (Western Australia)
The office existed from 1850, when Western Australia first became a penal colony, until 1872, four years after penal transportation to Western Australia had ceased.
Townsville Correctional Centre
Townsville Correctional Centre is an Australian prison facility in Stuart, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. The facility has been known in the past as "Her Majesty's Penal Establishment Stewart's Creek", "H.M. Prison Townsville", "Stuart Prison", and now known as "Townsville Correctional Centre".
Punishment in Australia
No penal colonies were located in the areas that have now become South Australia, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory.
Convict women in Australia
Marriage between male and female convicts and raising a family was encouraged because of the government’s intentions of developing a free colony. It was the objective of the British government to establish a colony in Australia rather than have it remain as a penal settlement. This compelled the government to send more women to Australia as a way of establishing a native population. On the arrival of 'female' ships, colonists would swarm to the dock to bargain for a servant. High-ranking officers had first pick. Some women were taken as mistresses, others as servants. There were no legal ties for these assignments, so a settler could dismiss a convict woman freely. When this did occur, it created a class of woman who often resorted to prostitution in order to feed and house themselves properly.
Convicts in Australia
Transportation continued in small numbers to Western Australia. The last convict ship, the "Hougoumont", left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868. In all, about 164,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies between 1788 and 1868 on board 806 ships. Convicts were made up of English and Welsh (70%), Irish (24%), Scottish (5%) and the remaining 1% from the British outposts in India and Canada, Maoris from New Zealand, Chinese from Hong Kong and slaves from the Caribbean.
History of Australia
By the mid-19th century, there was a strong desire for representative and responsible government in the colonies of Australia, fed by the democratic spirit of the goldfields evident at the Eureka Stockade and the ideas of the great reform movements sweeping Europe, the United States and the British Empire. The end of convict transportation accelerated reform in the 1840s and 1850s. "The Australian Colonies Government Act" [1850] was a landmark development which granted representative constitutions to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania and the colonies enthusiastically set about writing constitutions which produced democratically progressive parliaments—though the constitutions generally maintained the role of the colonial upper houses as representative of social and economic "interests" and all established constitutional monarchies with the British monarch as the symbolic head of state.
Culture of Australia
Aboriginal people are believed to have arrived as early as 60,000 years ago, and evidence of Aboriginal art in Australia dates back at least 30,000 years. Several states and territories had their origins as penal colonies, with the first British convicts arriving at Sydney Cove in 1788. Stories of outlaws like the bushranger Ned Kelly have endured in Australian music, cinema and literature. The Australian gold rushes from the 1850s brought wealth as well as new social tensions to Australia, including the miners' Eureka Stockade rebellion. The colonies established elected parliaments and rights for workers and women before most other Western nations.
Colonial forces of Australia
Initially the colony was run as an open prison under the governance of Royal Navy Captain Arthur Phillip. Later, as more free settlers were attracted to Australia and transportation was ceased in the mid-1800s, the nature of the colonies changed as Australia began to emerge as a modern, self-sustaining society and after the 1850s the colonies were progressively granted responsible government, allowing them to manage most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire. Nevertheless, the Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, including foreign affairs and defence. As a result, until the 1870s when the last imperial troops were withdrawn, British regular troops constantly garrisoned the colonies. During their postings to Australia, most of the regiments rotated duties in the various colonies, and often had detachments located in geographically diverse locations at the same time.
Punishment in Australia
Australia's prison population is now at the highest it has ever been, after a 20-year long surge in incarceration. From 2007 to 2017, the prison population of Australia is grew quickly in both total numbers and incarceration rate per capita. The highest rate of increase was seen among prisoners on remand (ie: unsentenced, awaiting trial or sentencing), women and indigenous Australians. From 2012 to 2017 the amount of people in prison on remand grew 87 percent. This might be due to more people being refused bail, and a backlog of cases in the courts.
Convicts in Australia
In 1823 John Oxley sailed north from Sydney to inspect Port Curtis and Moreton Bay as possible sites for a penal colony. At Moreton Bay he found the Brisbane River, which Cook had guessed would exist, and explored the lower part of it. In September 1824, he returned with soldiers and established a temporary settlement at Redcliffe. On 2 December 1824, the settlement was transferred to where the Central Business District (CBD) of Brisbane now stands. The settlement was at first called Edenglassie. In 1839 transportation of convicts to Moreton Bay ceased and the Brisbane penal settlement was closed. In 1842 free settlement was permitted and people began to colonize the area voluntarily. On 6 June 1859 Queensland became a colony separate from New South Wales.
Punishment in Australia
A 2016 article by Anastasia Glushko (a former worker in the private prison sector) argues in favour of privately operated prisons in Australia. According to Glushko, private prisons in Australia have decreased the costs of holding prisoners and increased positive relationships between inmates and correctional workers. Outsourcing prison services to private companies has allowed for costs to be cut in half. Compared with $270 a day in a government-run West Australian jail, each prisoner in the privately operated Acacia facility near Perth costs the taxpayer $182. Glushko also says that positive prisoner treatment was observed during privatisation in Australia by including more respectful attitudes to prisoners and mentoring schemes, increased out-of-cell time and more purposeful activities. As Australia’s prison population has grown and existing facilities have aged, public-private partnerships have provided opportunities to build new correctional centers while enabling governments to defer much needed cash flow. Glushko points out that at Ravenhall Prison in Victoria, the operator is compensated on the basis of the recidivism rate, and this strategy may make the operator more concerned about the wellbeing of its inmates after prison which in return would benefit the entire Australian correctional system.
Court of Criminal Jurisdiction (NSW)
The court was empowered to deal with any crimes committed in the colony of New South Wales. The colony at that time took in what is now Tasmania, then called Van Diemen's Land, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory, and of the course the current state of New South Wales. The scope of the colony was quite limited in its early days, so jurisdiction over places such as South Australia did not practically occur. In the case of Van Diemen's Land, the court rarely sat there, and prisoners were brought to Sydney for trial, or dealt with summarily in Hobart. The court also had jurisdiction to deal with offences in the colony of Norfolk Island, although it did not sit on that island. Prisoners were usually shipped back to Sydney to be dealt with. Technically, the court had jurisdiction over offences committed in New Zealand but practically did not deal with any such matters.
Yatala Labour Prison
For the first five years of South Australian settlement there was no permanent prison. Prisoners were kept locked in irons on board until its sailing in 1837, and in temporary jails subsequently. 1841 saw the first permanent prison built in Adelaide, with the Adelaide Gaol on the banks of the River Torrens, the building of which severely strained the new colony's finances.
History of Australia
In 1933, Sir Ernest Scott, stated the traditional view of the reasons for colonisation: "It is clear that the only consideration which weighed seriously with the Pitt Government was the immediately pressing and practical one of finding a suitable place for a convict settlement". In the early 1960s, historian Geoffrey Blainey questioned the traditional view of foundation purely as a convict dumping ground. His book "The Tyranny of Distance" suggested ensuring supplies of flax and timber after the loss of the American colonies may have also been motivations, and Norfolk Island was the key to the British decision. A number of historians responded and debate brought to light a large amount of additional source material on the reasons for settlement. This has most recently been set out and discussed by Professor Alan Frost.
Convict era of Western Australia
The convict era of Western Australia was the period during which Western Australia was a penal colony of the British Empire. Although it received small numbers of juvenile offenders from 1842, it was not formally constituted as a penal colony until 1849. Between 1850 and 1868, 9,721 convicts were transported to Western Australia on 43 convict ship voyages. Transportation ceased in 1868, and it was many years until the colony ceased to have any convicts in its care.
Riots at Fremantle Prison
Fremantle Prison is a former Australian prison in Fremantle, Western Australia, constructed as a prison for convicts, using convict labour, in the 1850s. The design for Fremantle Prison was based on the Pentonville Prison in Britain, and it would be the longest, tallest prison cell block in the southern hemisphere. Construction began in 1851, and was completed by the end of 1859. The prison was transferred to the colonial government in 1886 for use for locally sentenced prisoners. Following a Royal Commission held in 1898−99, some changes were made to Fremantle Prison, including knocking down the inner wall between two cells, introducing a prisoner classification system, and constructing internal walls in the main block to create four separate divisions. A new cell block, New Division, was completed in 1907 and occupied in 1908.
Wellington Convict and Mission Site
The Wellington Convict and Mission Precinct is historically significant as the site of the first ongoing contact between British colonists and the Wellington Wiradjuri. The settlement occurred on the frontier of the colony and made possible subsequent pastoral expansion. The place is historically significant as a remote convict agricultural station for difficult and "educated" convicts. It provides rare physical evidence of the way of life at a rural convict settlement. The murder of an Aboriginal girl by Overseer Brown and the 1927-28 court case is important evidence of early application of colonial law in relation to Aboriginal people. The Wellington mission was the first inland mission in Australia and the first of a series of missions around Wellington. The mission archives are in themselves highly significant due to the record of the Wiradjuri culture made by the missionaries, including a record of the Wiradjuri languages. The Wellington mission is historically an early example of the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families.
Convict era of Western Australia
As Western Australia was not yet a penal colony, contemporary documents scrupulously avoided referring to the Parkhurst apprentices as "convicts". Most historians have since maintained this distinction. An opposing view, held for example by Andrew Gill, is that the Parkhurst apprentices were convicts, and that their apprenticeships constituted convict assignment.
Colony of Queensland
Queensland was the only Australian colony that commenced immediately with its own parliament, instead of first spending time as a Crown Colony (i.e. having a Governor appointed by The Crown). By this time, Western Australia was the only Australian colony without responsible government. Ipswich and Rockhampton became towns in 1860, with Maryborough and Warwick becoming towns the following year.
Punishment in Australia
In 1993, New South Wales became the second Australian state to privatise prisons after Queensland, when Junee Correctional Centre was opened.
Convicts in Australia
With increasing numbers of free settlers entering New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) by the mid-1830s, opposition to the transportation of felons into the colonies grew. The most influential spokesmen were newspaper proprietors who were also members of the Independent Congregation Church such as John Fairfax in Sydney and the Reverend John West in Launceston, who argued against convicts both as competition to honest free labourers and as the source of crime and vice within the colony. Bishop Bernard Ullathorne, a Catholic prelate who had been in Australia since 1832 returned for a visit to England in 1835. While there he was called upon by the government to give evidence before a Parliamentary Commission on the evils of transportation, and at their request wrote and submitted a tract on the subject.
His views in conjunction with others in the end prevailed. The anti-transportation movement was seldom concerned with the inhumanity of the system, but rather the "hated stain" it was believed to inflict on the free (non-emancipist) middle classes.
Australians
Many early settlements were penal colonies, and transported convicts (and, later, ex-convicts) made up a significant proportion of the population in most colonies. Large-scale immigration did not occur until the 1850s, following a series of gold rushes. Further waves of immigration occurred after the First and Second World Wars, with many post-World War II migrants coming from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Pacific Islands, Africa, and Latin America. Prior to British settlement, Australia was inhabited by various indigenous peoples – Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal Tasmanians, and Torres Strait Islanders, a Melanesian people. A small percentage of present-day Australians descend from these peoples.
North Australia
A colony of North Australia existed briefly after it was authorised by letters patent of 17 February 1846. The colony comprised all land in the Northern Territory and the present state of Queensland lying north of the 26th parallel. The capital was at Port Curtis, now called Gladstone, under Colonel George Barney as Lieutenant-Governor and Superintendent. Charles Augustus FitzRoy, the Governor of New South Wales, was Governor. The colony was proclaimed at a ceremony at Settlement Point on 30 January 1847. The establishment of the new colony, and its status as a penal colony, attracted much criticism in the New South Wales Legislative Council. The Letters Patent establishing the colony were revoked in December the same year, after a change of government in Britain, although Colonel Barney and his party did not receive the news until 1847, when the news arrived in Sydney on 15 April 1847. The colony was intended as a new penal colony after the end of transportation in the older Australian colonies.
Immigration history of Australia
After the loss of the United States, Britain experienced overcrowding of its prisons and sought to ease the problems by transportation of its prisoners. In 1787 the First Fleet of 11 ships and about 1350 people under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip sailed for Australia. On 26 January 1788 a landing was made at Sydney Cove. The new colony was formally proclaimed as the Colony of New South Wales on 7 February. Other transport fleets bringing further convicts as well as freemen to the colony followed. As a result of agitation by the free settlers in Sydney, transportation of convicts to Sydney ended in 1840. It continued to the colonies of Van Diemen's Land (where settlement began in 1803) and Moreton Bay (founded 1824, and later renamed Queensland) for some years longer. The small settlement of Perth, founded in 1829 on the Swan River in Western Australia by free settlers, failed to prosper and asked for convicts. In contrast, South Australia, with its capital Adelaide founded in 1836, and Victoria, with its capital Melbourne founded in 1839, was settled only by free settlers. South Australia not only received British migrants, but also a significant influx of Prussian farmers and tradesmen, initially seeking freedom from religious persecution. By the end of the penal transportation in 1868, approximately 165,000 people had entered Australia as convicts.
History of Brisbane
As a penal colony, Brisbane did not permit the erection of private settlements nearby for many years. As the inflow of new convicts steadily declined, the population dropped. From the early 1830s the British government questioned the suitability of Brisbane as a penal colony. Allan Cunningham's discovery of a route to the fertile Darling Downs in 1828, the commercial pressure to develop a pastoral industry, and increasing reliance on Australian wool, as well as the expense of transporting goods from Sydney, were the major factors contributing to the opening of the region to free settlement. In 1838, the area was opened up for free settlers, as distinct from convicts. An early group of Lutheran missionaries from Germany were granted land in what is now the north side suburb of Nundah.
Australia–Hong Kong relations
Both colonies Australia and Hong Kong established by the British Empire in 1788 and 1841, which also on 26 January. Australian gold rushes in the 1850s was the first interaction between Australians and southern Chinese, as the colonial British Hong Kong became the point of departure for immigrants from southern China. White migration within the British empire continued along the sea lines of communication between Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia/New Zealand. After Australia formed their new federal autonomy government in 1901, the "Immigration Restriction Act 1901" was implemented to limit non-white immigration (including Eurasians) to Australia. Ethnic Chinese immigration resumed slowly as the White Australia policy was wound back during the 1950s and 1960s.
George Hall (British administrator)
After his time in South Australia, Hall was governor of Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. In his time as Governor of Parkhurst Prison, Hall proposed sending boys who were convicted in Britain to colonies as Parkhurst apprentices, whereupon they would receive a pardon on arrival in a colony, but be expected to serve out an apprenticeship before being eligible to return to Britain. This proposal was rejected by the Colony of South Australia, but accepted in Swan River Colony and forced on the Colony of New Zealand. Hall was an early advocate of using juvenile prison to rehabilitate young offenders to society rather than teaching them to be better criminals in their adult life. He sought to teach them a trade or other skills to avoid a life of crime.
Convict era of Western Australia
Western Australia objected strongly to the cessation of transportation, and, once it became clear that the decision would not be altered, pushed for compensation. Governor Weld wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies:
Despite the colony's objections, Britain gradually began to wind the colony's penal system up, by reducing its expenditure and disposing of its assets. One by one the country convict depots were closed, and in 1872 the office of Comptroller General of Convicts was abolished. Much of the penal system's infrastructure was handed over to the colony, including the Convict Establishment, which became Fremantle Prison.
Punishment in Australia
Prisons in Australia are operated for the detention of minimum, medium, maximum and supermax security prisoners convicted in state and federal courts, as well as prisoners on remand. There is no separate federal prison infrastructure, only state prisons. In the June quarter of 2018, there was 42,855 people imprisoned in Australia, which was an incarceration rate of 222 prisoners per 100,000 adult population., or 172 per 100,000 total population. This represents a sharp increase from previous decades. In 2016-2017 The prisoners were 91% male despite males only being half of the adult population, and 27% of prisoners were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders despite indigenous people only being 2.8% of the population. In 2018, 18.4% of prisoners in Australia were held in private prisons.
Convicts in Australia
Most convicts in Western Australia spent very little time in prison. Those who were stationed at Fremantle were housed in the Convict Establishment, the colony's convict prison, and misbehaviour was punished by stints there. The majority, however, were stationed in other parts of the colony. Although there was no convict assignment in Western Australia, there was a great demand for public infrastructure throughout the colony, so that many convicts were stationed in remote areas. Initially, most offenders were set to work creating infrastructure for the convict system, including the construction of the Convict Establishment itself.
Flagellation
Once common in the British Army and British Royal Navy as a means of discipline, flagellation also featured prominently in the British penal colonies in early colonial Australia. Given that convicts in Australia were already "imprisoned", punishments for offenses committed there could not usually result in imprisonment and thus usually consisted of corporal punishment such as hard labour or flagellation. Unlike Roman times, British law explicitly forbade the combination of corporal and capital punishment; thus, a convict was either flogged or hanged but never both.
Prisons by country
Many prisons in Australia were built by convict labour in the 19th century. During the 1990s, various state governments in Australia engaged private sector correctional corporations to build and operate prisons whilst several older government run institutions were decommissioned. Operation of federal detention centres was also privatised at a time when asylum seekers began to be mandatorily detained in Australia.
History of Australia (1901–45)
The First Fleet of British ships had arrived at Sydney Harbour in 1788, founding the first of what would evolve into six self-governed British colonies: New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland. The last British garrisons had left Australia in 1870. At the beginning of the 20th century, nearly two decades of negotiations on Federation concluded with the approval of a federal constitution by all six Australian colonies and its subsequent ratification by the British parliament in 1900. This resulted in the political integration of the six Australian colonies into one federated Australian Commonwealth, formally proclaimed on 1 January 1901.
Junee Correctional Centre
New South Wales was the second state in Australia, after Queensland, to introduce private prisons. Junee was the first prison in Australia to be designed, constructed and managed by the private sector under a single contractual arrangement. The prison is managed by the GEO Group Australia, which was granted a new contract in 2001. Following the October 2009 privatisation of Parklea Correctional Centre, Junee is one of two privately operated correctional centres in New South Wales, both operated by GEO Group Australia.
History of South Australia
The colony became a cradle of democratic reform in Australia. The Parliament of South Australia was formed in 1857, when the colony was granted self-government. Women were granted the vote in the 1890s. South Australia became a State of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 following a vote to federate with the other British colonies of Australia. While it has a smaller population than the eastern States, South Australia has often been at the vanguard of political and social change in Australia.
History of Perth, Western Australia
In his reports to the Home Office, Stirling acknowledged that previous explorations had found the area "sterile, forbidding and inhospitable" but argued that he had found it superior to New South Wales even, and promoted in glowing terms the agricultural potential of the area. His lobbying was for the establishment of a free settlement, unlike the other penal settlements at New South Wales, Port Arthur and Norfolk Island. Persuaded that the proposed colony would incur no significant cost on the part of the British Government, and perhaps fuelled by rumours that the French were about to establish a penal colony in the western part of Australia, the Colonial Office assented to the proposal in mid-October 1828.
Convict era of Western Australia
The first convicts to arrive in what is now Western Australia were convicts of the New South Wales penal system, sent to King George Sound in 1826 to help establish a settlement there. At that time, the western third of Australia was unclaimed land known as New Holland. Fears that France would lay claim to the land prompted the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, to send Major Edmund Lockyer, with troops and 23 convicts, to establish the King George Sound settlement. Lockyer's party arrived on 25 December 1826. A convict presence was maintained at the settlement for nearly four years. In November 1830, control of the settlement was transferred to the Swan River Colony, and the troops and convicts withdrew.
Sydney
The colony was not founded on the principles of freedom and prosperity. Maps from this time show no prison buildings; the punishment for convicts was transportation rather than incarceration, but serious offences were penalised by flogging and hanging. Phillip sent exploratory missions in search of better soils and fixed on the Parramatta region as a promising area for expansion and moved many of the convicts from late 1788 to establish a small township, which became the main centre of the colony's economic life, leaving Sydney Cove only as an important port and focus of social life. Poor equipment and unfamiliar soils and climate continued to hamper the expansion of farming from Farm Cove to Parramatta and Toongabbie, but a building programme, assisted by convict labour, advanced steadily.
Convicts in Australia
Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain to various penal colonies in Australia.
History of Australia (1788–1850)
It is commonly reported that the colonisation of Australia was driven by the need to address overcrowding in the British prison system, and the fact of the British losing the Thirteen Colonies of America in the American Revolution; however, it was simply not economically viable to transport convicts halfway around the world for this reason alone. Many convicts were either skilled tradesmen or farmers who had been convicted for trivial crimes and were sentenced to seven years transportation, the time required to set up the infrastructure for the new colony. Convicts were often given pardons prior to or on completion of their sentences and were allocated parcels of land to farm.
Berrima Correctional Centre
The Berrima Correctional Centre is an Australian prison, located at Berrima, New South Wales. The Centre was operational between 1839 and 2011 with a number of breaks in between, and was re-opened in September 2016. Initially established as Berrima Gaol, the facility closed in 1909 and reopened in 1949 as the Berrima Training Centre. At the time of its closure, the Centre was the oldest Australian correctional facility in operation. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
Punishment in Australia
Conversely, a 2016 report from the University of Sydney found that in general, all states of Australia lacked a comprehensive approach to hold private prisons accountable to the government. The authors said that of all the states, Western Australia had the "most developed regulatory approach" to private prison accountability, as they had learnt from the examples in Queensland and Victoria. Western Australia provided much information about the running of private prisons in the state to the public, making it easier to assess performance. However the authors note that in spite of this, overall it is difficult to compare the performance and costs of private and public prisons as they often house different kinds and amounts of prisoners, in different states with different regulations. They note that Acacia Prison, sometimes held up as an example of how private prisons can be well run, cannot serve as a general example of prison privatisation.
Fremantle Prison
Once the prison came under the control of the colonial government, it was renamed Fremantle Prison. All prisoners in Perth Gaol were transferred to Fremantle, and from 1887 female prisoners were also imprisoned there, in their own separate section. The Western Australian gold rushes of the 1890s resulted in strong economic growth, and a massive increase in population: doubling from almost 50,000 in 1891 to more than 100,000 by 1895, and to 184,000 by 1901. This influx included desperate, dishonest people, from elsewhere in Australia and overseas, and Fremantle Prison was soon overcrowded.
The 1890s also saw a growing public unease with the treatment of prisoners. In September 1898 a Royal Commission was established by the Governor of Western Australia to investigate the colony's penal system. The commission heard evidence from almost 240 witnesses, including a range of prisoners. Three reports were made between December 1898 and June 1899, dealing with the most recognisable and prominent issues including classification, sentencing, punishments, and diet. In particular, they considered the philosophy of the prison system – the causes of crime, as well as the types of punishments and their justifications – and in light of this, the practicality of various reform proposals.
History of Australia
While New South Wales, Tasmania and (although not initially) Western Australia were established as convict settlements, the founders of South Australia had a vision of a colony with political and religious freedoms, together with opportunities for wealth through business and pastoral investments. The South Australia Act 1834, passed by the British Government to establish the colony, reflected these desires and included a promise of representative government when the population reached 50,000 people. South Australia thus became the only colony authorised by an Act of Parliament, and which was intended to be developed at no cost to the British government. Transportation of convicts was forbidden, and 'poor Emigrants', assisted by an Emigration Fund, were required to bring their families with them. Significantly, the Letters Patent enabling the South Australia Act 1834 included a guarantee of the rights of 'any Aboriginal Natives' and their descendants to lands they 'now actually occupied or enjoyed'.
English Australians
Sydney was founded by the British government as a penal colony. Visitors described the English character of Sydney for at least the first 50 years after 1788, noting the traditional English appearance of the churches overlooking the convict barracks. First-generation colonial Sydney residents were predominantly English. 160,000 convicts came to Australia between 1788 and 1850. Between 1788 and 1840, 80,000 English convicts were transported to New South Wales, with the greatest numbers coming between 1825 and 1835. The New South Wales Census of 1846 accounted for 57,349 born in England, 47,547 born in Ireland and 14,406 born in Scotland.
Kingdom of Great Britain
In 1770, British explorer James Cook had discovered the eastern coast of Australia whilst on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement. Australia marks the beginning of the Second British Empire. It was planned by the government in London and designed as a replacement for the lost American colonies. The American Loyalist James Matra in 1783 wrote "A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales" proposing the establishment of a colony composed of American Loyalists, Chinese and South Sea Islanders (but not convicts). Matra reasoned that the land was suitable for plantations of sugar, cotton and tobacco; New Zealand timber and hemp or flax could prove valuable commodities; it could form a base for Pacific trade; and it could be a suitable compensation for displaced American Loyalists. At the suggestion of Secretary of State Lord Sydney, Matra amended his proposal to include convicts as settlers, considering that this would benefit both "Economy to the Publick, & Humanity to the Individual". The government adopted the basics of Matra's plan in 1784, and funded the settlement of convicts.
Joseph Samuel
Britain then maintained a penal settlement at Sydney Cove in the Colony of New South Wales. Security in the early penal settlements was reinforced by the isolation of the colony: guards trusted the Australian wilderness to kill any convicts who attempted to escape.
Anglican Church of Australia
Tasmania is home to a number of significant colonial Anglican buildings including those located at Australia's best preserved convict era settlement, Port Arthur. According to 19th century notions of prisoner reform, the "Model Prison" incorporates a grim chapel, into which prisoners in solitary confinement were shepherded to listen (in individual enclosures) to the preacher's Sunday sermon – their only permitted interaction with another human being. Adelaide, the capital of South Australia has long been known as the "City of Churches" and its St Peter's Anglican Cathedral is a noted city landmark.
Van Diemen's Land
In 1856, the colony was granted responsible self-government with its representative parliament, and the name of the island and colony was officially changed to Tasmania on 1 January 1856.From the 1800s to the 1853 abolition of penal transportation (known simply as "transportation"), Van Diemen's Land was the primary penal colony in Australia. Following the suspension of transportation to New South Wales, all transported convicts were sent to Van Diemen's Land. In total, some 73,000 convicts were transported to Van Diemen's Land, or about 40% of all convicts sent to Australia.
Cornish Australians
Sir George Arthur – Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land, now the State of Tasmania, 1823–1837. At the time Van Diemen's Land was the main British penal colony and it was separated from New South Wales in 1825. It was during Arthur's time in office that Van Diemen's Land gained much of its notorious reputation as a harsh penal colony. He selected Port Arthur as the ideal location for a prison settlement, on a peninsula connected by a narrow, easily guarded isthmus, surrounded by shark-infested seas. He failed in his attempts to reform the colony and the system of penal transportation with Arthur's autocratic and authoritarian rule leading to his recall. By this time he was one of the wealthiest men in the colony. He returned to Britain in 1837.
Punishment in Australia
Punishment in Australia usually occurs when an individual breaks the law, and enters into the Australian criminal justice system. Australia uses prisons, as well as community corrections (various non-custodial punishments such as parole, probation, community service etc). The death penalty has been abolished, and corporal punishment is no longer used. Before the colonisation of Australia by Europeans, Indigenous Australians had their own traditional punishments, some of which are still practiced in the 21st century.
Prisoner (TV series)
Prisoner (also known as Prisoner: Cell Block H in the United Kingdom and United States and Caged Women in Canada), is an Australian soap opera set in a fictional women's prison, called Wentworth Detention Centre, which was located in the fictitious Melbourne suburb of Wentworth.
Convict
The British Government then looked to the newly discovered east coast of Australia to use as a penal colony. Convicts were transported to Australia in 1787, arriving in Botany Bay, then Sydney Cove, in January 1788. From the very start of European settlement convicts were used as indentured labourers in five out of the six colonies. Many were used on public works, but a significant number were "assigned" to private individuals as domestic servants, rural workers, etc. Transportation was progressively abolished from 1853, eventually ceasing altogether in 1868.
History of Australia
Romantic descriptions of the beauty, mild climate, and fertile soil of Norfolk Island in the South Pacific led the British government to establish a subsidiary settlement of the New South Wales colony there in 1788. It was hoped that the giant Norfolk Island pine trees and flax plants growing wild on the island might provide the basis for a local industry which, particularly in the case of flax, would provide an alternative source of supply to Russia for an article which was essential for making cordage and sails for the ships of the British navy. However, the island had no safe harbour, which led the colony to be abandoned and the settlers evacuated to Tasmania in 1807. The island was subsequently re-settled as a penal settlement in 1824.
Private prison
In 2018, 18.4% of prisoners in Australia were held in private prisons. This was much higher than the rate for the United States which was 8.4%.
A 2016 book by Anastasia Glushko (a former worker in the private prison sector) argues in favour of privately owned prisons in Australia. According to Glushko, private prisons in Australia have decreased the costs of holding prisoners and increased positive relationships between inmates and correctional workers. Outsourcing prison services to private companies has allowed for costs to be cut in half. Compared with $270 a day in a government-run West Australian jail, each prisoner in the privately operated Acacia Prison near Perth costs the taxpayer $182. Glushko also says positive prisoner treatment was observed during privatisation in Australia by including more respectful attitudes to prisoners and mentoring schemes, increased out-of-cell time and more purposeful activities.
Fremantle Prison
Convicts were introduced into Western Australia for three main purposes: inexpensive labour, additional labour, and an injection of British government spending into the local economy. During the initial years of transportation, convicts were generally young, from a rural background, and of good character, having only committed minor offences – potential future colonists, after their sentence had been served. By the 1860s the majority were older, more serious offenders from urban areas, including political prisoners considered to be "difficult and dangerous". Following the transfer of Fremantle Prison to local control in 1886, it became Western Australia's primary prison. In the late 1880s and 1890s the number of inmates swelled dramatically. This increase predominantly comprised prisoners serving shorter sentences of under three months. The number of inmates in 1897 was 379, and Inspector of Prisons James Roe viewed the prison as "inconveniently full".
History of Australia (1788–1850)
The Swan River Settlement (as Western Australia was originally known), centred on Perth, was founded in 1829. The colony suffered from a long-term shortage of labour, and by 1850 local capitalists had succeeded in persuading London to send convicts. (Transportation did not end until 1868.) New Zealand was part of New South Wales until 1840 when it became a separate colony.
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.
List of convict ship voyages to Western Australia
This is a list of convict ship voyages that transported convicts to Western Australia during its time as a penal colony between 1850 and 1868.
Penal transportation
The overcrowding situation and the resumption of transportation would be initially resolved by Orders in Council on 6 December 1785, by the decision to establish a penal colony in New South Wales, on land previously claimed for Britain in 1770, but as yet unsettled. The British policy toward Australia, specifically for its use as a penal colony, within their overall plans to populate and colonise the continent, would differentiate it from America, where the use of convicts was only a minor adjunct to its overall policy. In 1787, when transportation resumed to the chosen Australian colonies, the far greater distance added to the terrible experience of exile, and it was considered more severe than the methods of imprisonment employed for the previous decade. The Transportation Act 1790 (30 Geo. 3 c. 47) officially enacted the previous orders in council into law, stating "his Majesty hath declared and appointed...that the eastern coast of New South Wales, and the islands thereunto adjacent, should be the place or places beyond the seas to which certain felons, and other offenders, should be conveyed and transported;"...or other places. The act also gave "authority to remit or shorten the time or term" of the sentence "in cases where it shall appear that such felons, or other offenders, are proper objects of the royal mercy"
Convicts in Australia
Western Australia's convict era came to an end with the cessation of penal transportation by Britain. In May 1865, the colony was advised of the change in British policy, and told that Britain would send one convict ship in each of the years 1865, 1866 and 1867, after which transportation would cease. In accordance with this, the last convict ship to Western Australia, the "Hougoumont", left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868.