1 Australia has both commonwealth and state jurisdictions. Each state develops its own penal policy independently of the federal government. This means that there is no penal policy for Australia as a whole. We thus decided that the best way to present this was to use its largest and oldest state (New South Wales, population 6,890,000) for fieldwork and data collection purposes.
2 Even though those Finns whose mother tongue is Swedish have declined from around 12 per cent of the population at the end of the nineteenth century to 5.5 per cent in 2011.
3 It was not ratified in Australia until 1942 (wartime exigencies necessitated that Australia develop its own defence policy rather than allow Britain to dictate what this should be), and in New Zealand not until 1947.
4 Dostoyevsky, quoted by Pisciotta (1994: 150), claimed that ‘the standards of a nation’s civilization can be judged by opening the doors of its prisons’. In a House of Commons speech, Churchill declared that ‘the mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country’ (Hansard [UK], HC Deb, 20 July 1910, col. 1354). For Mandela (1994: 201), ‘it is said that no-one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.’
1 Of the other Western countries (that is, not including former Eastern bloc countries, such as Hungary), apart from the USA at 752 per 100,000 of population, only Spain, at 152 in 2012, comes close to the rate of imprisonment of New South Wales and England and Wales. New Zealand (obviously behind the USA) is the second highest imprisoning Western society. At the other end of the spectrum, only Switzerland (76) and Japan (55) are within the parameters of the Nordic cluster.
2 The fieldwork was conducted by John Pratt between 2006 and 2010. It also involved visits to aftercare hostels and to probation offices, as well as interviews/discussions with 80 penal policy ‘stakeholders’ across the six societies (politicians, representatives of pressure groups and prisoners rights groups, civil servants, prison managers, academics and senior criminal justice officials). In addition, between 500 and 600 annual prison reports from the early nineteenth century to the early twenty-first were examined (this also involved, after Anna Eriksson joined the project in 2009, the translation of the Nordic reports), as well as other official documents (government reports, papers and propositions covering all six countries). Those from the Nordic countries were again translated from their original Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish. A wide range of other primary and secondary sources was also consulted – see the comments on Elias in the text at p. 31. There was also a systematic attempt to contrast press coverage of prison issues. We were told at the outset by a respected Finnish colleague that we should not bother to include Finland in this part of the research simply because ‘prison’ featured so rarely as a news item in that country. For the other five societies, however, we reviewed the way prison was reported as ‘news’ in the first six months of the year at ten-yearly intervals from 1956. These selections were very much determined by time and resources, and, in particular, which of the Anglophone newspapers were available online, since this part of the project was undertaken by a research assistant in New Zealand. Those selected were: The Times, one of the world’s oldest newspapers and still an authoritative broadsheet in England; The Dominion (now The Dominion Post), one of the largest selling regional broadsheets in New Zealand; The Sydney Morning Herald, one ofthe most important broadsheets in New South Wales; Svenska Dagbladet, a broadsheet newspaper that has the second largest circulation in Sweden; and Verdens Gang (VG), a Norwegian tabloid that is the largest selling and most widely read newspaper there. All five profess to be politically independent. While these selections were made on a pragmatic, rather than a scientific, basis, each reveals commonalities with the other selection(s) in the cluster in which they are located and, at the same time, very different values and reporting practices between the two clusters.
3 This was then abandoned by the New Labour government in favour of five 1,500 bed prisons – which, in turn, was abandoned by the incoming Conservative-Liberal coalition government in 2010.
4 There are three private prisons in New South Wales and one in New Zealand, with another one planned.
5 That is, the daily ritual of emptying chamber pots in the morning after their use for ablution purposes during the night.
6 Sugar is not available in Norwegian prisons because of the possibility of it being used to make alcohol, see Ugelvik (2011).
7 <http://www.ilsengfengsel.no> The reality of Swedish practice, in this respect, is illustrated in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Larsson, 2005: 386–8) in which Mikael Blomkvist’s prison sentence is deferred in this way. When he does arrive to serve his two month term, he finds 41 fellow inmates. ‘On the first day [he] was invited to the Director’s office and was offered therapy, adult education courses or possibilities for other studies and vocational guidance … he asked for permission to keep his laptop in his cell so as to be able to continue work on the book he was authoring. His request was granted without hesitation.’
8 As occurred in reforms to the New Zealand prison service during 1991 and 1992. Similar reforms were introduced to the English prison service in the Home Office’s Fresh Start proposals in 1986.
9 With some qualifications. It seems to have been a longstanding feature in New South Wales that prisoners have no voting rights. In New Zealand, prisoners serving under three years had been allowed the vote, but this has now been removed under 2010 legislation (see p. 183). In England, prisoners (from 1872) were not allowed to vote, a decision overturned by the ECHR in 2004, but which, in 2011, was still only in the process, most reluctantly, of being put into effect by the British government, see p. 25.
10 The Australian structure of government means that no national crime data set is readily available. We have thus relied on the crime rate and crime patterns in New South Wales. However, for reasons we do not understand, statistics for crimes reported to the police – the most usual measurement on which crime rates are calculated – are not available in this state until the 1980s. Prior to this, only ‘convictions in higher courts’ were available for this calculation. We have chosen not to use this measure because of the obvious inconsistencies with the rest of the crime data from this and the other societies.
11 Nor, anyway, is there some simple correlation between welfare provision and imprisonment rates. As is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5, as Sweden became the most advanced welfare state in the world between 1950 and 1965, its rate of imprisonment increased.
12 In post-war Norway, 37 out of 45 death sentences passed on war criminals, those convicted of treason and so on, were carried out. Our focus, though, is on punishment under peace time conditions. Clearly, when a country undergoes occupation in time of war, as in Norway by Nazi Germany, then the aftermath of this is likely to lead to reactions that transcend existing values and understandings about appropriate levels of punishment. Similarly, during the Finnish civil war and its aftermath, there were 9,700 executions, usually ordered by court martial and carried out by firing squad; 250 were sentenced to death in the courts. During WWII, there were 500 more executions, around half for spying. Again, then, in times of civil war or invasion, restraint and prohibitions are likely to be suspended.
1 The usual translation of this term is ‘peasant’, but this is misleading because it implies landlessness, which is clearly not the case here. Travers (1911: 36) thus observed, in Finland, that ‘what I have carelessly called “peasants” are most often yeomen, like the Cumberland Dales folk, farming their own lands … they live in the changeless way of small farmers under a simple civilization … the family and some two servants live all together beneath the same roof’.
2 At the beginning of the twentieth century, 62 per cent of its population then lived in cities.
3 See, variously, Belich (1996, 2001), Eldred-Grigg (1980), Hatch (1992), Miller (1958), Nicholls (1990), Sherington (1980) and Selzer (2002).
4 They had been given rights of Australian citizenship in 1948. They were given Commonwealth voting rights in 1962 and final state restrictions on the right to vote were removed in 1965.
5 ‘Mateship’ was very nearly inserted in the 1999 Australian Constitution, at the wish of then Prime Minister John Howard (Page, 2002).
6 Accordingly, in Norway in 1900, 99.4 per cent were registered as ‘Professing Christians’ and Protestants; in Finland, it was 100 per cent and 98.3 respectively; in Sweden, 98.3, of the population were Protestants, with no other religious beliefs recorded at all.
7 In Britain, 97.4 per cent of the population were professing Christians in 1900, with 64.4 per cent being Anglicans, 24 per cent Protestants and 6.4 Roman Catholics. In Australia, the figures were 96.8, of whom 36 per cent were Anglicans, 27 per cent Protestants, 22.3 Roman Catholics. In New Zealand, it was 98.3, of whom 39.2 per cent were Anglicans, 37.9 Protestants, and 13.5 Roman Catholics.
8 In addition to the role played by religion in the seventeenth-century civil war in Britain, on Protestant and Catholic conflicts in Australia in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, see Hughes (1987) and O’Farrell (2001). For New Zealand, see Belich (2001).
9 This is a derogatory term in the Anglophone countries, directed at intellectuals (with seemingly larger than usual brain power, and craniums to match) who are thought to be remote and detached from the concerns of ordinary people.
10 These are references to membership of the school cricket (First XI) and rugby (First XV) teams, bringing with it very high status and prestige amongst peers.
11 A ‘fag’ was a term given to a junior student at a British public school who was assigned to a senior student and was required to perform menial tasks for them (for example, making breakfast and afternoon tea, cleaning shoes, fetching shopping). Fagging was finally abolished in England’s most exclusive public school, Eton, in 1980.
12 After Thomas Arnold, Headmaster of Rugby School between 1828 and1841 (Tom Brown ‘attended’ the school during his headship). He emphasized the importance of classical scholarship rather than the physical sciences, and also developed the prefect system to maintain order at all levels of school life.
13 See, for example, Adam Smith (1776), The Wealth of Nations; Jeremy Bentham (1796), Essays; Herbert Spencer (1842/1981), The Proper Sphere of Government; John Stuart Mill (1859), On Liberty; and A. V. Dicey (1919), Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century.
1 Thus in England, the ‘job seekers’ allowance (that is, unemployment benefit) in January 2012 was £65 per week, irrespective of previous earnings and financial commitments. In the Australian means tested ‘newstart’ allowances, the maximum benefit a single person with no children would be able to receive, in May 2012, was $A489.70 every two weeks. In New Zealand, the means tested nature of unemployment benefits leads to the position that if one person loses their job in a two income household, they are not then eligible for unemployment benefit even though they have been paying national insurance contributions to this end.
2 There is no reference to Finland at this time because the welfare state did not really begin to form in that country until the 1960s – again, for much of the first half of the twentieth century, its social development had been arrested and put on hold in the aftermath of the civil war. Kuusi’s (1964) Social Policy for the Sixties then became the Finnish equivalent of the Beveridge Report.
3 In 1900, the workhouses held 188,000 inmates, or 0.59 per cent of the total population of England and Wales (Peter Higginbotham, ‘The Workhouse Website’, personal communication). USA prisons in 2012 hold about one per cent of that country’s total population. However, the much shorter periods of workhouse confinement meant that many thousands more would have had experience of admission. On this basis, the workhouse probably had a larger cultural and material significance than the prison currently does in the USA.
4 For example, well-behaved elderly couples were no longer separated, and were allowed such privileges as newspapers and their own teapot.
5 See, for example, Walter Greenwood’s (1933) Love on the Dole.
6 The reaction of OPEC to Western support for Israel in the Yom Kippur war of 1973.
7 Thus, in Selma Lagerlöfs (1918) Gösta Berling’s Saga, set in Sweden in the early nineteenth century, the hero is an unfrocked clergyman, turned beggar, who is given refuge by the Lady of the Manor in an annex on her country estate. She finds a place for him with twelve similar ‘cavaliers’ (sic), or tramps. Thereafter, ‘the Lady gave him a cottage and strip of land … and he tried to live the life of a workman. It answered for a time, but he grew weary of the loneliness and of the daily round of small duties … Later he became tutor to [a Count]. While there he fell in love with the Count’s sister, but she died just when he thought to win her, and after that he gave up all thought of being anything but a cavalier’ (ibid.: 31–2). Here, then, Berling experiences no loss of status, no suffering imposed by the local or central state and no disqualifications as he chooses the ‘cavalier’s’ life.
8 Such events are described in the Nobel Prize winning Finnish novelist F. E. Sillanpää’s (1938: 47) Meek Heritage: after the family farm had been sold due to unpaid bills, ‘Maja had to leave the stripped house, taking her son with her. She did not elect to stay on in her birthplace, where her little life ever since her childhood days had been so full of disappointments, but after drying her eyes decided to try her luck with her brother, who was rumored to be fairly well off … the first part of the journey they were alone. Soon, however, Jussi (her son) and Maja had company. When they came to the main road they saw, wherever the land lay open, long, unbroken lines of tramps.’
9 See, for example, Golding and Middleton (1982).
10 The Norwegian Progress Party emerged in the 1970s, originally as an anti-tax social movement. It later became associated with anti-immigration and more severe law and order policies. At the time of writing (June 2012), it is the second largest party in the Norwegian parliament with 41 seats, gaining its highest share of votes in national elections at 22.9 per cent in 2008. Similarly, the Swedish Democrats were founded in 1988, and gained parliamentary representation for the first time in 2010 by polling 5.7 per cent of the vote and winning 20 seats. The True Finns party came into existence in 1995 and won 19.1 per cent of the votes in the national elections of 2011, making it the third largest party in the Finnish parliament.
11 Cf. Kuhnle (2000: 211): ‘international winds of welfare state criticism and warning quickly reached Scandinavian shores, but hardly seemed to rock the solid historical position of the state … economic rather than ideological factors drove reform’; Lindbom (2001: 171): ‘although the Swedish welfare state was reformed in many ways in the 1990s and some cutbacks were made, the welfare state has not been dismantled. Its major attributes when compared to other countries – e.g. its generosity, universality and developed welfare services – are almost as prominent as before the crisis.’
12 For example, Time (15 April 1966: 7) reported that ‘resource rich, welfare-loving Sweden has long enjoyed the highest living standard in Europe … after 32 years of unbroken and rising prosperity, Sweden’s workers have grown so affluent that about all the tiny Communist Party could find to demand in the last election was “two houses for every family”. Swedish families already own 375,000 vacation homes and 300,000 pleasure boats … domestic tranquillity is rarely ruffled by labour trouble: the last strike of consequence took place in 1945.’
13 Literally, ‘awkward/difficult Sweden’. In Norway, supperådet (‘The Soup Council’), based on a 1969 television programme, has become a term that refers to unnecessary, wasteful government bodies (Thomas Ugelvik, personal communication).
14 There were taxation levels of 85 per cent on some income levels amongst the self-employed at this time.
15 In the 1990s, unemployment rates reached 10 per cent in Sweden and 18 per cent in Finland.
16 The Beveridge Report intended to rid British society of five ‘Giant Evils’: ‘squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease’ (Beveridge, 1942: 6).
17 Although, as we have seen, social planning was an integral feature of the social democratic welfare state. The Economist (10 February 1951: 329) reported that ‘the economic and social policy that has been pursued in recent years was to some extent mapped out in the “post-war Programme of the Labour Movement”, published in 1944 … the authors were much more interested in planning than in nationalisation measures, the latter being largely rejected to a dim and distant future.’
18 The phrase of the Conservative Minister for Work and Pensions (Daily Telegraph, 11 November 2010: 1).
19 Prime Minister David Cameron thus referred to civil servants as ‘the enemies of enterprise’, and attacked the ‘mad bureaucracy that holds back entrepreneurs’ (The Guardian, 7 February 2011: A2).
20 The British Conservative Party was in government from 1951 to 1964. The National Party was in government in New Zealand from 1949 to 1957 and from 1960 to 1971. Although, in New South Wales, the Labour Party was in power from 1940 to 1965, more importantly, the Liberal-Country Alliance was the federal government from 1949 to 1972 (after 1942 the Commonwealth government assumed much greater powers, including the collection of income tax which had previously been left to state governments to determine, thereby ensuring the Commonwealth’s domination).
21 As well as New Labour in England, renamed in 1994 to avoid its previous associations with ‘extremism’, Labour was in power in New Zealand from 1984 to 1990 and 1999 to 2008, and in Australia from 1983 to 1995 and 2007 to 2012.
22 Most notably, in New Zealand, the watersiders’ strikes of 1913 and 1971, and the general strike of 1979; in Australia, the general strike of 1911 and the watersiders’ strike in New South Wales in 1909.
23 In Norway, ‘the ‘Main Bargain’ (Hovedavtalen), 1935; Sweden, the ‘Saltsjöbaden Agreement’ 1938; Finland, the ‘January Agreement’, 1940.
24 Although the Danish People’s Party has been an exception to this. It supported Liberal-Conservative coalition governments from 2001 to 2011, although it has never been in cabinet.
25 Sweden had the largest circulation of newspapers in the world in the 1960s per capita of population (Tomasson, 1970).
26 See, for example, Åkerström (1998); Pollack (2001); Makipää (2004); Rossland (2007); and Smolej and Kivivuori (2008).
27 This is an inquiry set up by the British government in 2011 to inquire into the culture, practices and ethics of the press in the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal at the Murdoch owned News of the World (at the time of writing it has yet to report).
28 As the British demographer David Glass (1938: 317) wrote, their book ‘dropped a bombshell on the thinking public of Sweden. And apparently the thinking public of Sweden is much larger, proportionately, than in England, for so far the book has sold 16,000 copies, equivalent to a sale of over 100,000 here – a figure rarely reached even by popular books.’
29 Trust in the two main political parties in this country had declined to 11 per cent for Labour and 13 per cent for National in a 1993 opinion poll (see Pratt, 2007).
30 A Google search for ‘flats for sale in Thailand’ in Swedish revealed 330,000 hits on this website; the same search in Norwegian revealed 2,500,000 hits.
31 http://crystalfromsweden.com/swedish-glassware/
32 This tradition probably begins with Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s (1887) A Study in Scarlet, the first of the Sherlock Holmes short stories. Two of the latest British invocations of the detective-as-outsider genre are Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels, beginning in 1987 with Knots and Crosses; and Peter Robinson’s Chief Inspector Banks, also beginning in 1987 with Gallows View. In contrast, J. J. Maric’s (1964) Inspector Gideon series was one of the much smaller genre in which the emphasis was on the success of the police as a crime fighting organization, rather than the capabilities of its individual officers, and was written at the peak of authority of the liberal welfare state.
33 http://oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/soc_glance-2011 (last accessed 29 January 2012).
34 As translated by Nils Christie.
1 Unlike these other societies, New South Wales kept the death penalty for murder and rape until abolition, even though it had been abolished for the latter offence in England in 1841. The most celebrated occasion when it was used for this offence was in 1886: after a gang rape, four of the nine defendants were hanged. The last occasion on which it was used to punish rape in this state seems to have been in 1932.
2 Public executions were abolished in New South Wales in 1855, in New Zealand in 1858, in England in 1868, in Norway in 1876 and Sweden in 1877.
3 William Crawford (1834), the English prison inspector, went to the USA to observe and report back on the merits ofboth prison systems. The Governor ofNew South Wales, Sir George Gipps, noted in 1840 that the cells in Sydney and Paramatta gaols were designed on ‘the plan of the American separate system, or, which is nearly the same thing, the plan approved by the English Inspectors of Prisons’ (quoted by Kerr, 1988: 45). The Swedish novelist Fredrika Bremer visited the penitentiaries in the USA during her sojourn there from 1849 to 1851 (Bremer, 1853), as did the leading Norwegian physician Dr Fredrick Holst in the 1830s (see Schaaning, 2007).
4 Bentham’s plans for the panopticon were produced in 1787 (Bozovic, 1995). The idea was that prison inmates, separated from each other at all times, would also be seen at all times by prison staff from a central inspection house. While, in reality, exact replicas of the panopticon were never built, and Bentham’s subsequent influence on nineteenth-century prison development should not be overstated (pace Foucault, 1977), the importance he gave to separation – along with other pioneering prison reformers in the late eighteenth century, such as Sir George Onisipherous Paul (see Whiting, 1975) – and surveillance was clearly of landmark importance.
5 The death penalty, for all intents and purposes (it was retained for some time thereafter in these societies for treason and arson in Her Majesty’s shipyards but no such cases were brought post-1945) was abolished in New South Wales in 1955, New Zealand 1961 and England in 1965.
6 Responsible government was granted to New Zealand in 1853 and New South Wales in 1855, with executive authority vested in their respective Governor-Generals. Prior to this, as Crown colonies, English law automatically applied in these societies.
7 See Palmer (1990), Bernadotte: Napoleon’s Marshal, Sweden’s King. It seems that the European connections of King Charles John (formerly Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte) who, as a Marshal of France, had served under Napoleon, made him popular in Sweden and Norway.
8 The Swedish Law Commission of 1811 contained ‘some of the finest lawyers and civil servants of their time’ (Seth, 1984: 34), but the first report was written by Professor Lars Rabenius; the second by the prominent jurist Johan Gabriel Richert. The Norwegian Penal Law Commission of 1841 had, as its members, a general (representing the King), the Christiania city planner and architect, a senior magistrate and lawyer, the governor of the then Akershus Fortress (or local prison in Oslo) and Professor Frederik Holst, the Christiania ‘Town Physician’, also involved in treating prisoners and mental patients. There were three Finnish Law Commissions. That of 1862 was chaired by a prominent philanthropist and had two civil servants, but its leading member was Professor Karl Gustav Ehrström. The latter was also the most prominent figure of the 1865 Commission, the membership of which, in addition to Ehrström, was made up of a judge and four civil servants. That of 1880 had Professor of Law Jaakko Forsman, another professor (Emeritus) and four civil servants.
9 See Tate (1975) and Zander (2004).
10 See Stephen (1895), Bresler (1977), Devlin (1979) and Heward (1990).
11 The Court of Exchequer was an Appeal Court, dealing with matters of equity and common law. It was replaced by the Supreme Court of Judicature in 1873.
12 In England, between 1837 and 1868, there were around twelve per year. In New South Wales there were around five per year between 1840 and 1859, although between 1830 and 1839 there were around 30 per year. In New Zealand, there had been seven between 1840 and 1858. Between 1800 and 1850, there were around ten executions per year in Sweden, dwindling away to hardly any by 1870. In Norway, there were 44 executions between 1815 and 1876.
13 The pastors often voted in favour of retaining the death penalty and, in the 1867 debates in the riksdag, several speakers from the clergy estate also favoured public executions: the condemned should be able to repent their crimes before God and society, the vote being 27:11 in favour of retaining public executions.
14 See Seth (1984).
15 The last execution in Norway in 1876 was in private, the last four in Sweden.
16 Karlstad Tidningen, although Seth (1984) does not provide the date of publication.
17 See Collins (1962: 248) regarding the support of Dickens and Carlyle for capital punishment per se. Mill, as a Liberal MP, spoke against a motion to abolish the death penalty (Hansard [UK], HC Deb, 21 April 1868, col. 1047–55) – although on the grounds that execution was a more humane punishment than the alternative of life imprisonment.
18 See Pratt (1992) and McGuire (1988).
19 The last execution in New South Wales was in 1940.
20 In Australia, especially, it was thought that the death penalty offered a cloak of protection against the transient nature of its population: 'the time is not opportune, with the present conditions of development and introduction of vast numbers of people from other countries’ (Hansard [NSW], 23 March 1955: 3259).
21 Public opinion polling in England in 1939 was 55−45 in favour of abolition (see Potter, 1993).
22 Although in England there was an average of 13 executions per year between 1900 and 1949, the number had fallen to eight between 1930 and 1939, but was then inflated between 1940 and 145 with an average of 14.5 per year during this wartime period. Between 1950 and 1964, there were around four per year. In New Zealand, there had only been 28 between 1898 and 1957. In New South Wales, there were only 12 between 1910 and 1940.
23 For some Australians and New Zealanders, the very fact that it had been retained in England was, in itself, good enough reason for its retention in the colonies: ‘if there is one thing a British community can pride itself upon it is that punishment follows more swiftly upon wrongdoing than it does any other civilised community in the world. That has been the effect of bringing into existence a very law abiding community’, (Hansard [NSW], 10 Sept 1925: 739).
24 This is particularly ironic, given that Salisbury was, himself, a hereditary peer, and thereby allowed to automatically assume his seat in the House of Lords.
25 See, for example, Hansard [NZ], 1 May 1956: 531–572.
26 Dickens (1842: 123) was one of the fiercest critics of the separate system – ‘a rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement.’
27 Thus the Revd John Field (1848: 146), Chaplain of Reading prison, explained that, in the separate system, ‘an appeal is made to the moral sense and understanding of the prisoner as he is led through … a contemplation of past actions and an acknowledgement of their wickedness’. And William Clay (1861/1969: 142), Chaplain of Preston gaol, affirmed that, under the separate system, ‘the prisoners, in many cases, have shown that softening of the heart which is evinced by tears’.
28 Austin Bidwell (1895:187), serving a fifteen-year sentence for bank robbery, observed the consequences of this kind of prison regime: ‘the first part of the [prisoner’s] body to be visibly affected by the effects on them of hunger and torment of the mind is the neck. The flesh shrinks, disappears, and leaves what look like two artificial props to support the head. As time goes on, the erect posture grows bent; instead of standing up straight the knees bulge outwards as though unable to support the body’s weight, and the convict drags himself along in a kind of despondent shuffle. Another year or two and his shoulders are bent forward … The projecting head, the sunken eye, the fixed expressionless features are the outward exponents of the hopeless, sullen brooding within.’
29 Hume trained under Du Cane before coming to New Zealand as that country’s first Inspector of Prisons. Harold Maclean, New South Wales’ first Inspector of Prisons in 1864, travelled to England and met Du Cane during 1869–70, and then remained in correspondence with him (Kerr, 1988: 101).
30 It was calculated that the treadwheel required the prisoner to raise the lower half of their bodies 11,000 feet (over 3,000 metres per day). The prisoner turned the crank in his cell, which paddled sand through a drum. The norm was for it to be turned through 10,000 revolutions per day. Reade’s (1856) It is Never too Late to Mend is a novel based on a scandal at Birmingham prison where, after being made to perform labour on a crank that weighed four times more than was recommended, a prisoner was then subjected to further privations and dietary restrictions that led to his suicide (Anderson, 2005: 191). Although treadwheels had been used in New South Wales prisons up to the 1850s, Maclean banned their use in 1864, and male prisoners, at least, were involved in productive labour; women prisoners, however, might be engaged in oakum picking (Ramsland, 1996: 41). The Report of the Comptroller-General of Prisons (1908: 6) later stated that ‘no afflictive labour is performed in New South Wales prisons’. There were never the resources for ‘hard labour machines’ in New Zealand.
31 One gramme is roughly equal to one small paper clip.
32 Up to the 1830s, transportees on arrival in New South Wales might be assigned to work as a servant, often to those who had been transported themselves, before being emancipated; or to work on road gangs or other forms of public works. They would receive tickets of leave on completion of their term and might even be granted settlements of land, where they could then assume something like full citizenship.
33 The Royal Commission on Brutality in Berrima Prison (1875) found that officers had been involved in the widespread use of ‘spread-eagling’ and the use of wooden ‘gags’, for up to 10 hours at a time on recalcitrant prisoners, practices which were then prohibited. Spread-eagling involved ‘the tricing up of a man by the wrists, with his feet not quite on the ground’ (Ramsland, 1996: 98). The prison doctors had approved of the gag, described by the 1875 Commissioners as ‘made of hard wood… [with] a base about three inches long, 3/4 of an inch thick, and about 1¾ inches broad. From this base projects a thick, conical turned tube … for insertion into the mouth. A strap is tacked to the back of the base of the gag and buckles at the back of the head of the prisoner upon whom it is used’ (ibid.: 99). The Report of the Comptroller-General of Prisons (1894: 2) then stated that, ‘in consequence of very gross misconduct of a certain incorrigible class of prisoners in the use of blasphemous and frequently vile and filthy language, it was decided by the Minister of Justice that the use of a gag should again be sanctioned in gaols’. The last whipping in a New South Wales prison was in 1905 (Finnane 1997: 114). In England, flogging remained as a sanction for prison indiscipline until 1967, and was used as late as 1966. The last flogging in New Zealand prisons was in 1935 (Newbold, 2007).
34 Shorthand for ‘cat of nine tails’, that is, a multi-tailed whip.
35 Roddy Nilsson, personal communication.
36 ‘A bell rings and my door is unlocked. No word is spoken because I know exactly what to do. I leave my cell and fall into single file, three paces in the rear of my nearest fellow convict. All of us are alike in knowing what we have to do and we march away silently to Divine Service. We are criminals under punishment and our keepers march us like dumb cattle to the worship of God’ (Maybrick, 1905: 67).
37 Other critics included, in Sweden, Clas Livijn, first Director of the Prisons Board in the 1840s – largely on the grounds of its costs and inefficiency (see Nilsson, 1999).
38 On the growing importance and influence of the ‘professional classes’ towards the end of the nineteenth century, see Ibsen (1882), An Enemy of the People; and Strindberg (1890), By the Open Sea.
39 See also Rossa (1882) and Lee (1885).
40 See Report of the Commissioners of Prisons (1899: 21).
41 But not in Finland where, until 1979, variations of striped uniforms, albeit with decreasing ostentation over time, were worn (at least in the closed prisons).
42 In the Nordic countries, remands in custody – in isolation – had, by this time, also become a routine administrative convenience. This practice can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth-century concerns about hygiene and fear of moral contagion. The Swedish Penal Code 1864 prescribed that ‘detention shall be of such a nature that it is not dangerous to the health of the person detained, nor shall several people be placed in one room when it can be avoided. If private rooms are not available, all those arrested shall not be detained in company with those arrested for more serious crimes … a person arrested must not be detained in company with one who is serving a prison sentence’ (quoted by Almquist, 1931: 198).
1 For helpful overviews, see, for example, Mannheim’s (1960) Pioneers in Criminology; and Bierne’s (1994) The Origins and Growth of Criminology.
2 Elimination is the French term that was used in the texts of these scholars to convey the intent of punishment, most usually, ‘to set apart the most dangerous individuals so as to deprive them of the opportunity of causing harm’ (Ancel, 1965: 55).
3 Although Garofalo (1914) was of the view that habitual criminals should be executed.
4 The other two were Adolph Prins of Belgium and G. A. van Hamel of the Netherlands.
5 von Liszt (1851–1919) receives virtually no mention in English language overviews of the history of criminology – see, for example, Mannheim (1960), Beirne (1993, 1994), and Becker and Wetzell (2006). Radzinowitz (1991) is one of the very few English texts to acknowledge his significance. He was a pivotal figure, though, in the development ofboth German and Nordic criminology (see Landecker, 1941; Stang Dahl, 1985).
6 In addition, ‘the distinction between the detention of incorrigible criminals and the institutionalization of dangerous insane persons is not only impracticable but also to be dismissed as a matter of principle’: von Liszt (1897: 74).
7 That is, fines that were proportionate to the daily income of the particular offender.
8 On the subsequent impact ofvon Liszt in Sweden, see Simson (1949: 32): ‘despite things being different from how von Liszt envisaged, there is a common goal: to protect society. “Mutual” is the keyword. The crime is important, but the offender is more important. The goal and the keyword are what rules modern criminal law and what will rule it in the future.’
9 In Finland, the high prison population of the inter war period was the product of severe sentences for theft at a time of great financial hardship, and increases in murder and violence in general which, to a degree, were the legacy of the civil war (Lehti, 2001). At the same time, this also meant that psychiatric and other welfare services were off limits for financial reasons, let alone for other reasons; see Soine (1958).
10 The 1956 Penal Code Commission then noted that 80 per cent of murderers had been found to be insane in 1953.
11 Developed in England in 1843, following the acquittal of Daniel M’Naghten for attempting to murder Queen Victoria. In its aftermath, a panel of judges narrowed the existing insanity laws to the effect that the insanity defence would only be applicable in those cases where the accused ‘did not know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did, did not know it was wrong’ (M’Naghten’s Case, (1843) 10 C & F 200).
12 The other three contributors included Torsten Eriksson, then a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Social Welfare (the other two were a historian and a doctor).
13 Kleen co-authored, with Bruno Poukka, one of the few that were written: Poukka and Kleen (1939), Gröna Ön [The Green Island].
14 See, for example, Nordin (2005), although membership of the Lutheran Church has always remained high, since not only are all members of these societies automatically born into it, but they can only leave by resigning from it.
15 It would seem that, from the late nineteenth century to around 1970, Finland remained largely to true to the von Liszt outline of prison administration, if not the numbers being sent to prison, particularly in relation to the division of conditions in the closed and open prisons. In relation to the former, Uusitalo (1970: 324) wrote that ‘the main aim of the Finnish prison is to guard the interns. Great emphasis is placed on security, a strict and authoritarian discipline, and constant control over inmates. These institutions have as their task the prevention of attempts to escape and to maintain internal order through the use of walls, steel reinforced doors, barred windows and constant presence of armed guards. The regulations inmates are expected to follow are many and detailed. The restrictions regarding visits are strict, and all mail, all books and magazines censured. The intention with the strict rules and restrictions is to achieve a total control over inmates.’ See also Granfelt (1949) and Soine (1958).
16 Magnus Hörnqvist, personal communication, and derived from Per Albin Hansson’s famous ‘people’s home’ speech in the riksdag in 1928 (see p. 73).
17 There were 1,214 in Sweden in 1961, from an average prison population of 4,909 ([Report of the] Prison and Probation Board, 1962: 9).
18 In part, this was brought about by increasing Nordic cooperation in policy development. For example, the establishment of the Nordic Council in 1962, as an inter-parliamentary body that could give recommendations on all political matters to its member states, solidified the unity between these societies and insulated them from other modes of economic, social and penal governance. In the same year, the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology [NSFK] was established ‘to further criminological research within the member countries and advise the [Nordic] governments and the Nordic Council on issues related to criminology’ (http://www.nsfk.org/ABOUTTHECOUNCIL/tabid/64/Default.aspx). Furthermore, with the need to repress and freeze out civil war experiences gradually fading out of that country’s collective memories, the Finnish Social Democrats in 1968 recognized that ‘crime policy forms a major part of social policy … crime policy must strive for the same economic and educational values of fairness that are strived for in other solutions related to social policy’ (quoted by Miikkulainen and Suominen, 1981: 303). Now armed with these values, its own aberrant prison population began its dramatic decline, along with liberalization of conditions within its closed prisons: ‘the prisoner’s connections to the outside world have to be arranged so that they are not totally isolated from the community’, Report of the State Imprisonment Commission (1969: 35).
19 Indeed, it was not until the Geneva Congress of Criminal Anthropology in 1896 that England sent its first official delegate (Garland, 1997: 34).
20 In New Zealand and New South Wales, Kayll, in the former, and Frederick Neitenstein, Comptroller-General of New South Wales in the late nineteenth century, and others, were in correspondence with Lombroso. See Pratt (1992) and Finnane (1997).
21 See Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (1904). To counter these differences in breeding habits, Leonard Darwin stated that the aim of the eugenics programme was ‘to promote the fertility of the better types which the nation contains, while diminishing the birth rate amongst those which are inferior’ (quoted by Garland, 1985: 147).
22 In particular, through the development of multiple correlation, by which it now became possible to test the relationship between any number of variables; and the tetrachoric coefficient which, Pearson (1903) claimed, made it possible to measure the strength of heredity in determining nominal human characteristics such as eye colour and intelligence.
23 See Pember Reeves (1902) regarding Australia and New Zealand; also Fraser (2009) for documentation regarding Liberal governments in England in the early twentieth century and the development of welfare legislation.
24 Similarly, in New Zealand, the Liberal Justice Minister Dr John Findlay took the view that ‘the idea of putting a man in gaol simply to punish him for his offence … was rapidly passing from the public mind. We are beginning to recognize that we not only owe a duty of society in punishing the criminal, but we owe a duty to the criminal himself in endeavouring to reform him’ (Hansard [NZ] 1909: 294).
25 Hobhouse and Brockway’s (1922) English Prisons Today was the product of these interrelations. Both the authors had been imprisoned as conscientious objectors during the 1914–1918 war, and their research was subsequently sponsored by the Labour Research Committee.
26 It was reduced to three months for recidivists and one month for first offenders in 1910, before being abolished altogether in 1922.
27 Camp Hill, on the Isle of Wight, was one such prison in England. As if to note the transfer of the inmates from penal detention to, in effect, civil detention, in the second stage of the preventive detention sentence, Morris (1950: 397) later commented that ‘it was intended to secure the detainee’s safe custody with a minimum of hardship for the individual inmate’; hence the reference (p. 144) to ‘bland neutralization’.
28 Other categories of mental deficiency included ‘idiocy’, ‘imbecility’ and ‘feeblemindedness’.
29 Cr App R 201 (at 204).
30 7 Cr App R 283 (at 285).
31 14 Cr App R 118.
32 19 Cr App R 1.
33 Although the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded (1908) had estimated that were some 150,000 ‘mental defectives’ in Britain, in the first year of the 1913 legislation, ‘only 6,612 were in mental deficiency institutions, and the vast majority of these were simply transferees from lunatic asylums, workhouses etc.’ (Simmons, 1978: 400). In a study of the application of this law in one English county, Walmsley (2000: 66–7) writes that four young men were detained in institutions under the provisions of the legislation between 1916 and 1918 and ‘out of the 15 girls and young women [so detained], 11 were described as displaying inappropriate sexual behaviour. The other four were institutionalized because their families … could not manage them.’
34 As well as the lingering presence of the death penalty in these societies, flogging, as a judicial penalty in England, was not abolished until 1948. And it continued to be available for offences against prison discipline until 1967, see note 33, Chapter 4.
35 That is, those who, on the face of it, were most likely to be suffering from some sort of mental disorder.
36 Thereafter, the British Conservative government – illustrating the extent of the political recognition and respect for these elites at that time – established a Royal Commission on the Penal System in 1964, which became the Advisory Council to the Home Office on the Penal System in 1966.
37 By 1938, probation orders were being awarded to 15 per cent of adults convicted of indictable offences in England (Bottoms, 1983). However, probation was little used in Australia and New Zealand until the 1950s. Thus, in New Zealand, the first full time probation officers were not appointed until 1927 (four in number). Thereafter, the number of orders declined from 658 made in 1925 to 605 in 1935. In England, over the same period, the number of persons placed on probation increased from 15,094 to 18,934. This difference may explain why the fall in the prison population in England was significantly greater at this time than in New South Wales and New Zealand. It may be that the lack of a bureaucratic infrastructure in the thinly populated colonies was one reason for this difference. At the same time, however, the liberal thinking behind such developments seems to have been much more diluted and treated with caution, at least in New Zealand. Here, the Report of the Chief Probation Officer (1926: 1) stated that ‘probation should not be used for confirmed habitual offenders, drug addicts, dipsomaniacs, the feeble-minded, the psychopathics [sic], the mentally unstable and sex perverts … and that premeditated assaults for revenge or gain, criminal assaults on females, and crimes resulting in the corruption of children, are altogether outside the scope of the probation system. Probation is also discountenanced in the cases ofhabitual drunkenness and professional prostitution long continued. The crimes for which probation is most extensively used are for offences against property such as theft and embezzlement.’
38 For example, in England, under the provisions of the 1914 Criminal Justice Administration Act.
39 Home Secretary Churchill’s proposals for suspended sentences were rejected because this would ‘quickly bring the administration of justice into ridicule’, his Abatement of Imprisonment Committee informed him: see Radzinowicz and Hood (1986: 651–2).
40 As well as arguing for compulsory prison aftercare (ACTO 1958) – this was now regarded as a legitimate extension of state responsibilities – ACTO (1965) justified parole on the basis that it should be available for those prisoners who had arrived at ‘the peak of their treatment’.
41 For example, following the recommendations of ACTO (1959), the Criminal Justice Act 1961 prohibited ‘courts from sending young offenders under 21 to imprisonment unless they considered that a sentence of at least three years would be appropriate’ (Hall Williams, 1970: 308). In New Zealand, the Minister of Justice, in a speech to the House of Representatives, stated that ‘there are certain offenders who should not be in prison. The first and most obvious of these offenders are alcoholics … the second can be classified as borderline mental defectives … I am also concerned at the number of young people and first offenders who are detained in prison pending trial or who are remanded for sentence’ (Marshall, 1957, 12).
42 Dingle (1980) provides an overview of Australian drinking habits (see Fairburn (1989) in relation to New Zealand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century). While, in fact, some scholarship now disputes the affinity for heavy drinking in these former colonies, Australia especially (see Kirkby, 2006), there seems little doubt that there was a much higher level of tolerance towards alcohol consumption in these societies than the Nordic. On the pub as a focal point of community life, see Freeland (1966) The Australian Pub and Jennings (2007) The Local: A History of the British Pub.
43 As Morris (1989: 96) shows, in relation to England, violence against the person offences increased from 7,884 in 1955 to 25,549 in 1965 and offences against property from 399,924 in 1955 to 1,064602 in 1965. Regarding New South Wales, Grabosky (1977: 143) wrote that, ‘beginning in 1963, rates of burglary, larceny, armed robbery, and robbery with assault showed sharp increases … to 1970’. Regarding New Zealand, ‘estimates of offending by race indicate that [Pacific] Islanders and Maoris [sic] offend against the person at a much greater rate than does the European population … in 1964, the rate of sexual offending by Islanders was twice and other assaults about 13 times the statistical expectancy … the rate of sexual offending involving Maoris [sic] was almost four times, and of assaults over six times the statistical expectancy … members of racial minorities may have fewer and less effective controls than more sophisticated persons belonging to the numerically dominant race’ (Report on the Department of Justice, 1968: 209).
44 In relation to tramps or ‘swaggers’ in New Zealand around the turn of the twentieth century, see Fairburn’s (1995) Nearly Out of Heart and Hope.
45 See Orwell’s (1933) Down and Out in Paris and London.
46 The Home Office (1959: 1) referred to ‘the startling increase in convictions of young men aged, roughly, from 16 to 21. These men are responsible for more than their share of the increase in offences of violence; but the increased rate of crime at these ages extends to offences of all kinds.’
47 Although, in practice, this still occurred up to the 1970s. See Nagle (1978).
48 See Report of the Departmental Committee on the Employment of Prisoners (1933). In New Zealand, there had been opposition from the 1890s to any kind of factory production in the prisons. See Lingard (1936).
49 For example: ‘unfortunately it has been necessary to suspend central training courses and to place full responsibility for training on Prison Superintendents. This results from the need to use Wellington prison, formerly used as a training school, for normal institutional purposes’ (Report on the Department of Justice, 1958: 4).
50 Seventeen out of 78 prisons in England had some form ofpsychotherapeutic programme, according to the Home Office (1959), in Penal Practise in a Changing Society.
51 The Report of the Commissioners of Prisons (1956: 31) thus refers to ‘the experiment at Norwich prison, designed to establish a new prison officer/prisoner relationship by allocating groups of prisoners to specific officers. [Furthermore,] dining in association has been introduced for all convicted prisoners; [and] prisoner working hours have been increased from 26 to 35 hours per week.’
52 Hall Williams (1970: 91) thus wrote that ‘[the] new type of prison cell … is actually smaller than the traditional cell, which was 13 feet by 7 feet by 9 feet, and the bars are built into the window frame which incorporate manganese steel bars. There is a table built into the wall and the general impression is of more space. There is still no W. C. [toilet] provided to avoid the daily “slopping out” procedure which is the bane of prison reformers.’
53 ‘[T]he working week is restricted to 20 to 30 hours, but a number of prisoners in recent years have been unemployed’: Report of the Commissioners of Prisons (1955: 10).
54 Particularly in the aftermath of the Mountbatten Report of the Inquiry into Prison Escapes and Security (Mountbatten, 1966) and the report from the Advisory Council on the Penal System (1968). The Prison Officers’ Association also took this opportunity to criticize ‘the liberal regimes’ put in place by the authorities and reemphasized their own importance in enforcing security – at the expense, again, of any more productive aspects of their work (The Times, 7 June 1966: 10; see also Report on the Work of the Prison Department, 1967: 5).
55 For example, the Swedish spy Karl-Axel Gustafsson ‘escaped by using a ladder he had himself constructed in the [prison] carpentry shop, and he climbed the wall having made his way through a window … the public have raised questions about how easy it is to construct large tools such as a ladder to be used for escape, but Prison Director Rudstedt said that it was not that difficult, since many prisoners had considerable freedom while working in various shops inside the walls’ (Svenska Dagbladet, 4 August 1951: 1).
56 The Times (3 February 1966: 12), claimed, in relation to an anticipated escape, that ‘Tanks Expected in Gaol Rescue Attempt. Why Army Guards Were Used. The friends of [prospective escaper], one of three mail train robbers in Durham Prison, would be prepared to launch a full scale military attack to free him, “even to the extent of using tanks, bombs and what I believe are known as limited atomic weapons”, it was stated tonight by the Durham Chief Constable.’
57 For example, ‘there has been a need to restrict expenditure on education in the interests of economy’ (Report of the Commissioners of Prisons, 1962: 18); but at the same time: ‘there are signs of an increase in the number of prisoners for whom backwardness in basic subjects is a problem’ (Report on the Work of the Prison Department, 1967: 8).
1 Symptomatic of these differences, fear of crime, as indicated in surveys from 1989 to 2009, has remained much lower in the Nordic countries than the Anglophone.
Table 6.2 Feeling unsafe on the streets, 1992–2005. Percentage of population feeling “unsafe” or “very unsafe” on the street after dark.
| Country | 1992 | 1996 | 2000 | 2004–05 |
| Australia | 31 | 34 | 27 | |
| New Zealand | 38 | 30 | ||
| England & Wales | 33 | 32 | 26 | 32 |
| Finland | 17 | 17 | 18 | 14 |
| Norway | 14 | |||
| Sweden | 14 | 11 | 15 | 19 |
Source: van Dijk, van Kesteren and Smit (2007).
Furthermore, while levels of punitivity over the same period do not show such clear differences, the same surveys indicate that there is still a greater tolerance, a greater willingness, to consider leniency in punishment in the Nordic countries than the Anglophone.
2 See, for example, in addition to the general criticisms made by Martinson (1974), Bottoms and McClintock (1973).
3 [1980] 1WLR 1193.
4 See, for example, Report of the Corrective Services Commission (1983: 9).
5 As, for example, in the provisions of the New Zealand Criminal Justice Act 1985.
6 For a more detailed examination of the run up to the 1979 British general election, see Taylor (1982).
7 Detention centres, based on army-style ‘glasshouses’, or punishment blocks, had been introduced to the English penal system in 1948, after much agitation for them from the Magistrates’ Association. The first was not opened until the early 1950s, however, but the ‘short sharp shock’ aspects of these centres came to very little at that time. They were reintroduced in 1980 in two pilot centres.
8 Public opinion support for the death penalty ranged from 81 per cent in 1977 to 76 in 1995: hrtp://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2582/Support-for-the-Death-Penalty-19772009.aspx?view=wide
9 See NACRO (1984). Cavadino and Dignan (2002: 291, our italics) also write that, ‘to few people’s surprise, monitoring found that the modified regimes appeared to be no more effective than the previous ones at deterring [offenders]. However, the government’s response to the failure of its ‘experiment’ was not to abandon it but, remarkably, to extend the tougher regime to all detention centres.’
10 The detention centres ‘disappeared’ in 1988 when they became ‘youth custody institutions’: see Muncie (1990).
11 The irony being, of course, as Garland (1996) astutely observed, that this is in reality a sign of weak government: it can only bring about unity by expelling some of its own citizens.
12 The full referendum question was: ‘should there be a reform of our justice system placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims, providing restitution and compensation for them and imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offences?’
13 After raising critical questions about New Zealand’s high level of imprisonment, the New Zealand Chief Justice was herself criticized by the Minister of Justice ‘for speaking publicly on policy matters’ (New Zealand Herald, 17 July: A3).
14 Bartlett (2009: 49) shows how, in New Zealand, the ‘Sensible Sentencing Trust’, a law and order lobby group, dominated news reporting of crime and punishment in 2004, despite their claims that the voice of ‘ordinary people’ was never heard on these matters.
15 ‘Naming and shaming’ practices are widespread in these Anglophone countries. They can refer to activities by the media against particular groups or individuals, as with the News of the World in this case. But they can also refer to local police practices in circulating neighbourhoods about particular individuals; shopkeepers who display photographs in their windows of those who have stolen from them; and local citizens’ groups that distribute posters or other forms of information about suspected criminals.
16 See Pratt (2000) for further examples. More recently, in New South Wales, Dennis Ferguson, convicted of sexual offences against children, was released from prison in 2004. Since then, he has been driven out of his accommodation on several occasions in Queensland and New South Wales by angry neighbours groups. For example, in 2009, he moved into a public housing apartment in the Sydney suburb of Ryde where he was given a five-year lease. Some residents ofthe area were outraged at Ferguson’s presence, after news organizations revealed where he was living – near a primary school and playgrounds. The police then obtained an order banning him from public pools and parks and the New South Wales government introduced legislation to evict child sex offenders from public housing (Daily Telegraph, 19 September 2009: 4; Daily Telegraph, 22 October 2009: 2).
17 A judge’s deletion of some of the content of a victim impact statement – in New Zealand, these are meant to refrain from criticisms of the offender and the criminal justice system but speak only to their sufferings – was described by its writer, the father of a murdered young woman, as ‘just another way the justice system puts victims down’ (Otago Daily Times, 13 November 2009: 1).
18 Thus, ‘angry family members have denounced as a joke the seventeen-year prison sentence imposed on a multiple sex offender yesterday’ (The Dominion, 4 April 1996: 3).
19 Daily Telegraph (16 June 2008: 3), although the proposals for ‘conviction posters’ seem to have come to nothing.
20 (2002) CA106/02, CA137/02, 19 CRNZ 574.
21 [2003] HC Auckland, T020505, BCL 360.
22 See Cavadino, Crow and Dignan (1999). The fines legislation was repealed by the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Act 1993.
23 Although these provisions have now been overturned by the IPPS legislation.
24 ‘[C]uts in public expenditure will delay the completion of plans for … providing every establishment with suitable and sufficient educational accommodation; for ensuring that all people in custody who need remedial education (not simply the most backward) receive it’ (Report on the Work ofthe Prison Department, 1975: 17).
25 Thus, in New South Wales, the Report of the Department of Corrective Services (1976–1978: 4) noted the ‘increased press publicity on escapes in spite of the lack of change in the overall escape rate’. For example, ‘Nine of the Most Wanted Criminals Are Prison Escapers’, the Sydney Morning Herald (26 February 1986: 2) gratuitously proclaimed, complete with photographs of each and details of their modus operandi.
26 The situation was similar in Australia: see Brown and Zdenkowski (1982).
27 For a detailed review of press coverage of Bathurst, see Brown and Zdenkowski (1982), and, for Strangeways, see Carrabine (2004).
28 In addition, ‘[the Grafton “intractables”] would be kept for 16 hours per day in cellular separation and whose exercise was to consist of “formal marching in single file for 20 minutes each day”’ (Ramsland, 1996: 228).
29 Respectively, the Woodcock Report (Woodcock, 1994) and the Learmont Report (Learmont, 1995).
30 In New South Wales, this was ‘to provide a correctional system that is internationally recognized for excellence’ (NSW Department of Corrective Services Annual Report, 1998–9: 1); in New Zealand, ‘to be recognised for our expertise in contributing to community safety and reducing reoffending’ (Report of the Department of Corrections, 1999–2000: 1).
31 On retiring from his position as Chief Inspector of Prisons after five years in the post, Sir David Ramsbotham commented that ‘I have never received ministerial acknowledgement of, or response to, any of these reports or their contents, or their recommendations’ (The Weekly Telegraph, 27 July–31 July: 10, 2001).
32 Taunoa and others v Attorney-General (2006) SC 67/2006. After the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the prisoners, the decision was reported in the New Zealand Herald (9 December 2005: A1) as ‘Inmates in Line for Millions After Appeal Court Decision’.
33 In fact, the vote in favour of this legislation was only 62−56. However, this disguises the fact that the vast majority of the opponents of the legislation did not want to allow prisoners any right to compensation at all. Under the legislation itself they still had a nominal right, but would now receive none of the proceeds if successful in their claim.
34 Uncertainties over release because of indeterminate sentencing could ‘trigger repeat of Strangeways’ a former Chairman of the Parole Board is quoted as saying in the Daily Telegraph (14 May 2012: 3).
35 Increasing foreign travel during the 1960s and 1970s seems to have created public pressure for more liberalization. Indeed, from 1965, mid-strength beer was allowed to be sold in Swedish grocery stores, although this was in the hope that it would divert consumers from hard liquor, rather than any enthusiasm from the state for greater freedom of choice. Indeed, when this was found to be illusory, the grocery sales were prohibited; further legislation banning alcohol advertising was introduced in 1978; in 1981, Systembolaget was no longer allowed to open on Saturdays (Sundin, et al., 2008).
36 Six per cent of the total prison population of 6,284 in 1966.
37 For example, see Bottoms and Preston (eds.) (1980), The Coming Penal Crisis.
38 Corporal punishment had been banned in senior elementary Swedish schools in 1918 and in all schools in 1962. Sweden was also the first country to prohibit parents from chastising their children with corporal punishment, in 1978. Professional boxing was banned in 1969, in part on the grounds of its brutalizing effects on the audience (Anderson, 2007: 127).
39 Prostitution remains legal in Finland except, from 2006, the buying of sexual services that are linked to human trafficking.
40 In Sweden, the Report of the Penal Code Commission no. 55 (1956: 30) noted that ‘it is of great importance that the person who commits the crime is made to restore the damage done from it… when ordering compensation, the offender’s personal circumstances have to be taken into account [but] the courts can use pressure to insist the offender makes up for the damage done’. It goes on to note that money for these purposes can be deducted from their welfare payments or wages.
41 A hunger strike at the Oslo Botsfengslet 6–9 March, 1965, had been over poor quality food. In particular, the inmates ‘complained that the food was not warm enough. A Committee looked into this and changed the way the food was delivered, and introduced heated food cabinets that could be loaded up in the kitchens and then taken to each wing’ (Report of the Director of the Prison Board, 1965–1966, 1973: 72).
42 Ward (1972: 241) subsequently interviewed inmates who had been involved in disruption at Österåker and reported that ‘even when they were engaged in hunger or work strikes, they said they had never felt pressed to the point where they considered taking staff members hostage, let alone injuring them. Neither guards nor inmates carry weapons in Swedish prisons. Perhaps for these reasons the Swedish inmates were not concerned about protection from “physical punishment by the staff”, being held “incommunicado” or being “kept in isolation”.’
43 As we were informed by a member of KROM during an interview with them.
44 ‘Humane containment’ first appeared in the Home Office (1969: 7) document People in Prison. It was then proposed by King and Morgan (1980), following their submission to the May Committee (1979). While rejected then, the phrase has become part of the parlance of Anglophone prisons. For example, in 2009, the Department of Corrections website in New Zealand advertized positions for prison officers who would be ‘responsible for the safe, secure and humane containment of prisoners within or outside the institution’ (http://www.corrections.govt.nz/careers/opportunities-at-corrections/prison-services-jobs/corrections-officer/job-description.html, last accessed 20 March 2012).
45 Tony Blair’s visit to Pentonville in 2001 ‘to announce a 10 year crackdown on crime’ (rather than engage in a meaningful dialogue with inmates) was the first such visit by a serving Prime Minister (ITVLunchtime News, 26 February 2001). We were informed by one of the New Zealand interviewees that, between 1999 and 2002, when ‘prison’ had become a particularly highly charged topic of public and political debate, only four MPs visited a such an institution.
46 There was also a report of a prisoner who had written a book about while in prison (VG, 15 April 1986: 23).
47 The Director of Prisons thus resigned after the Hall escapes in 2004.
48 See the Scarman report, The Brixton Disorders 10–12 April 1981 (Scarman, 1981). Furthermore, after disturbances in Liverpool in 1981, the charismatic Conservative MP, Michael Heseltine, took a leading role in the redevelopment of that city, for which he was honoured with the ‘Freedom of Liverpool’ in 2011.
49 See, for example, Newburn (2011).
50 ‘Government Plans to Withdraw Benefits From Convicted Rioters Criticised’ (The Guardian, 19 August 2011: 1), ‘Westminster Vows to Evict Social Tenants Involved in Riots’ (The Guardian, 10 August 2011: 1).
51 <www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/23/almost-1000-jailed-riot-related-offences> (last accessed 22 May 2012).
52 <www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London-riots-Lidl-water-thief-jailed-for-six-months.html>; <www.guardian.co/uk/2012/feb3/…/riot-inciter-jailed-message-disorder> (last accessed 22 May 2012).
53 In terms of victims per head of population, it was greater in magnitude than 9/11 in the USA: 77 deaths in Norway in a population of 4.9 million in 2011; in the USA there were 2,752 deaths from a population of over 300,000,000 in 2001. With the equivalent populations, the number of Norwegian deaths would have been over 4,600.
54 An opinion poll in October 2011 found that support for the Norwegian Progress Party had declined by more than half in two years, to 11.1 per cent of the electorate: <www.newsinenglish.no/2011/10/13> (last accessed 22 May 2012).