NCJ Number
188443
Journal
Punishment and Society Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2001 Pages: 279-298
Date Published
April 2001
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This article examines the shifting modes and institutions of punishment in colonial Australia in terms of the application of punishment to the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, with emphasis on the experiences in Western Australia and Queensland, which were the colonies of latest settlement.
Abstract
The European settlement of Australia from 1788 was accompanied by a prolonged dispossession of the indigenous people, who became British subjects by law. Regimes of punishment had an important role in this dispossession. The available information suggested that conventional modes of punishment were modified to accommodate indigenous offending. Public execution and corporal punishment of Aborigines continued after their exclusion as options for the settler population. In addition, imprisonment was shaped to the goal of managing a seemingly intractable indigenous population. However, the colonial government developed less violent punitive resources to manage the indigenous population in completing the process of disposition. Strategies of social control increasingly used in an attempt to address the distinctive challenges posed by a dispossessed indigenous population included incarceration within unique institutions, segregation from the settler population, and surveillance and regulation through an expanding bureaucracy. Notes and 33 references (Author abstract modified)