// Panel 1B //
The Lasting Legacies of Criminal Justice Systems

Discussant: Dr Andy Kaladelfos // University of New South Wales // Criminology

Abstracts

Adrien McCory // Australian Catholic University // Gender Studies

Policing Trans and Gender Identity in Australia's Past

Throughout Australia’s history it has not been illegal (for the most part) for an individual to present in a gender nonconforming fashion, or to otherwise express a gender nonconforming identity. However, despite this lack of explicit legal regulation, police have consistently targeted transgender, gender diverse, and gender nonconforming individuals. Trans and gender diverse people have historically (and currently) presented challenges to Australian carceral institutions. In politics and the media, transgender people as a criminal subject have had their existence debated and dissected to fit into stereotypes of gender diversity as something innately criminal or deviant.

My research aims to explore how Australian criminal justice institutions have criminalized, legislated, policed and understood trans and gender diverse people throughout the twentieth century. In this paper I discuss my research, and how the changing perspectives on gender diversity from the turn of the twentieth century to the present-day have influenced and reflected responses from criminal justice institutions and police. Ranging from the policing of “boy-girls” and “masqueraders” in the early decades of the twentieth century, to oppressive characterizations of trans women in prisons as deviant predators, debates around gender diversity have shifted dramatically across the century. However, some key themes around the construction of criminal subjects within binary gender frameworks emerge throughout this period - and remain problematic today.

Biography

Adrien McCrory is a PhD candidate and sessional tutor at Australian Catholic University who is interested in gender studies, and Australian criminal history. He has a bachelor’s degree in history and completed his Honours thesis on Australian press responses to female criminals in 1920s Victoria. He is currently working on his thesis on Transgender Australians and their Interactions with the Criminal Justice System in Twentieth Century Australia. Adrien is a transgender man and is passionate about exploring gender diversity throughout history.

Dr Emma D. Watkins // University of Birmingham // Criminology

Path Dependence and Imperial Legacy

Path dependence characterizes historical sequences in which contingent events set into motion institutional patterns that have deterministic properties. This paper will explore the case for path dependence in the Tasmanian institutional context. Despite alternative paths, the decision to transport convicts to Australia was taken. It will be argued that with the ending of transportation, the convict system continued under the façade of the pauper system (where paupers were treated like convicts, were held in convict buildings, and were presided over by those who were former convict superintendents). Indeed, many of the pauper residents were former convicts. The contemporary shadow of the carceral state is argued to be enlarging non-criminal pathways to punishment. Similarly, it will be argued that in nineteenth-century Tasmania, the shadow of the penal colony acted to keep pauper-emancipists institutionalised.

Biography

Emma is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Birmingham and was awarded a fully funded PhD from the University of Liverpool. This dissertation led to her monograph: Life Courses of Young Convicts Transported to Van Diemen's Land. Emma is an historical criminologist who uses digital technologies with historical documentation and criminological methodologies. She is also an elected member of the Royal Historical Society.

Emma’s current project is on Australian pauper-emancipists. This interdisciplinary research explores the collective and individual life-courses of transported convicts who moved from the convict to the pauper establishments. This research engages with the contribution of historical studies, using the life-course method, to mainstream criminology.

Dr Eleanor Bland // Oxford Brookes University // Criminology

Agents of Colonial Rule: the Enduring Impacts of Historical Australian Policing

This paper is an introduction to my developing research project on the policing of marginalised groups in colonial Australia, and the legacies of these practices. While scholars have recognised that police officers were at the forefront of the creation of a new social order in the Australian colonies, there have been no substantive comparative analyses of how officers negotiated their roles and operated in practice within the communities that they policed. Focusing on Queensland and Western Australia, the project examines ‘suspect communities’ who were targeted, monitored and criminalised: convicts, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and non-European immigrant groups from China and Melanesia. Not solely a historical project, it also asks how the legacies and memories of the targeted policing practices have been transmitted in colonial and postcolonial contexts. This includes innovative co-production methods with Aboriginal communities, to ensure that traditionally marginalised or unheard voices are drawn into the project.

Biography

Dr Eleanor Bland is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Oxford Brookes University, UK. She completed her PhD at the University of Sheffield as part of the Digital Panopticon Project, which sparked her interest in researching Australian policing. She subsequently worked as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds. Her first monograph, Policing Suspicion: Proactive Policing in London, 1780-1850, was published with Routledge in Autumn 2021.