// Panel 1A //
Criminalisation and Emotion

Discussant: Professor Jane Lydon* // University of Western Australia // History

*Professor Lydon was unwell on the day, and so her comments and response to the panel were presented by Dr Eureka Hendrich // University of Hertfordshire // History

Abstracts

Dr Claudia Soares // Newcastle University (UK) // History

‘You are not prisoners, nor is this a prison’: reforming the most wicked and depraved children in New South Wales, 1860-1900

Across Britain and the Australian colonies, there was increasing anxiety about the growing number of young criminals. A raft of legislation was introduced in Britain and in the colonies to facilitate the removal and detention of children who had committed crimes or were identified to be at risk of offending. Reformatories and industrial schools were established by both state and voluntary agencies to assist with the ever-growing problem of youth criminality.

This paper takes a single institution – the Biloela Industrial School and Reformatory in NSW as a case study – and its female inmates to investigate how female youth criminality was perceived in the colony, and how these understandings shaped the management and reform of these young criminals. In doing so, the paper highlights the distinct issues that the colonial administration faced in replicating the model of industrial schools within NSW, shedding light on the broader dialogues and connections at play about children’s criminality across the empire. Notably, the paper makes the case for bringing history of emotions and the ‘new’ history of experience approaches to the study of institutionalisation and incarceration. It shows how concepts drawn from these fields can illuminate new understandings about the complexities of ordinary and marginalised lives of inmates and their emotional experiences and interpretations of incarceration, their relationships with the state, the core values of a newly established colonial society, and ideas of human equality and the ethics of care and control.

Biography

Dr Claudia Soares is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and NUAcT Fellow at Newcastle University. Her current BA funded project In Care and After Care: Emotions, Welfare, and Institutions in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1820-1930 combines ‘new’ imperial history and history of emotions approaches. It examines the development of transnational policies and practices relating to care and control of children and families at risk, and recovers the social and emotional experiences of marginalised individuals who spent time in a range of state and voluntary institutions.

Her first monograph, A Home from Home? Children and Social Care in Victorian and Edwardian Britain is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. She has published recently in The History of the Family, History Workshop Journal, Journal of Victorian Culture, and the Journal of Historical Geography. Her research interests include: welfare and poverty, the history of the family, the history of emotions, race, empire and migration, and landscape and environment.

Ariel Yin Yee Yap // Monash University // Criminology

Legacies of Trauma: Examining the impact of Singapore political detention without trial, 1948 to 2000

The use of torture and indefinite detention without trial has been a longstanding concern internationally. This paper seeks to better understand the impact of indefinite detention without trial. It will do so by analysing the trajectory of state responses to left-wing movements following the political detention of politicians, journalists, social workers, anti-colonial activists, academics, and unionists since the Malayan emergency in 1948. My arguments draw from on data generated during fieldwork undertaken for research on Detention without Trial in Singapore. Data consists of 135 oral history interviews conducted with victims, their families, and members of the community, many of whom shared their experiences for the first time. My research constitutes original analysis of the sociological ‘blind spot’ of punitive practices that have occurred outside traditional criminal justice institutions, and seeks to understand the historical practice of detention and its social harms following a hundred and forty-six years of British Colonial administration that allowed repressive laws to be used in post-colonial contexts. Ultimately, my research findings indicate that extensive long-term harms stem from subtle modes of pain-delivery to overt modes of illiberalism through police use-of-force, torture, indefinite detention, administrative, and legal measures that justify performative degradation and punishment of devianised citizens.

Biography

Ariel is a doctoral research and teaching associate at Monash University, Australia. Her research focuses on policing, punishment, state crime, harm, and policy implications. Ariel’s recent publications include Capital punishment in Singapore; United Nations, and the Rule of Law Sustainability: Case Studies on Singapore and the Solomon Islands. Ariel continues to work on prison linkage projects in Australia, she is currently working on an interdisciplinary project with Singapore, Australian, and UK academics, as they edit a series of publication on Social Justice and Violence in Singapore.