The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: Law and Power in Early New South Wales

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 501
Author(s):  
Jim Phillips ◽  
David Neal
1993 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 1307
Author(s):  
Michael Sturma ◽  
David Neal

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 1139-1160
Author(s):  
Barry Godfrey

Abstract Between 1850 and 1868, a natural experiment in punishment took place. Men convicted of similar crimes could serve their sentence of penal servitude either in Britain or in Australia. For historians and social scientists, this offers the prospect of addressing a key question posed over 200 years ago by the philosopher, penal theorist and reformer Jeremy Bentham when he authored a lengthy letter entitled ‘Panopticon versus New South Wales: Or, the Panopticon Penitentiary System, and the Penal Colonization System, Compared’. This article answers the underlying tenet of Bentham’s question, ‘Which was best prison or transportation?’ by applying two efficiency tests. The first tests whether UK convicts or Australian convicts had higher rates of reconviction, and the second explores the speed to reconviction.


2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 659-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kercher

When it was established in 1788, New South Wales became the most remote, and most peculiar, of the British empire's overseas colonies. The founding colony of what would eventually become Australia, it was established as a penal colony, a place to send the unwanted criminals of Britain and Ireland. Britain lost more than the majority of its North American possessions in the late eighteenth century. It also lost its principal repository for unwanted felons. New South Wales filled the gap.


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