sydney: deviance and the city

Sydney: Deviance and the City

The Parish Constable (until 1829)

Pre-1829

• Crime monitored by ‘Parish Constables’ and ‘Watchmen’ (often unpaid).

• Those with money could pay professionals to solve a certain crime.

• Riots and disturbances were generally handled by the military.

Metropolitan Police Act - 1829

Pre-Victorian Prisons

• More than 200 offences resulted in the death penalty (including murder, rape, and treason).

• Offences not punished by death (such as theft) often resulted in being sent to the colonies as a convict, known as ‘Transportation’.

• Prisons were most often used to house minor offenders, such as debtors

• Prisons were established wherever room could be found: cellars, dungeons, old castles, and in London even disused ships in the docks.

• Prison was fee paying: prisoners paid for food and lodging, and could improve their experience according to price.

Victorian Prison Reform

• New prisons were built across the country to ease overcrowding, using uniform ‘Panopticon’-inspired architecture.

• Prison was increasingly seen as a ‘corrective’ measure – to punish and reform the prisoner into a good person through hard work.

• Prisoners were segregated and almost entirely isolated.

• Prisoners were kept in silence, to help them ‘reflect’ on their crimes.

• Prisoners were made to do hard labour, often pointless.

• Debtors were removed to special ‘Debtors’ prisons’ or Workhouses, where they would work to pay back their debts; their families would often come and work with them.

Jeremy Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’ design

Autralian Convicts

• 1788-1868: about 162,000 convicts ‘transported’ to Australia

• Most convicts were guilty of relatively petty crimes like theft, or were political prisoners

• Convicts were usually imprisoned for a certain period, and then made to work on public works: constructing roads, buildings, and rearing livestock.

• Convicts were often ‘assigned’ to work for free settlers.

• Convicts slept and ate at convict depots, or barracks.

• From 1849, convicts were allowed to work where they liked, though had to remain in the district they were assigned.

• Women convicts were generally put to work in factories, or as domestic servants.

• After their sentence was finished, a convict could be issued with an ‘absolute pardon’, which meant they could return to Europe, or a ‘conditional pardon’ which meant they had to promise to remain in Australia.

• Convicts were strongly encouraged to marry other convicts, so as to increase the free settler population.