Punishment, Welfare and Gender Ordering in Queensland, 1920–1940
| Author | Kerry Wimshurst |
| Published date | 01 December 2002 |
| Date | 01 December 2002 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1375/acri.35.3.308 |
in Queensland, 1920–1940
Kerry Wimshurst
Griffith University, Australia
This study investigates the relationships between penality (or official
approaches to punishment) and welfare thinking that emerged in
Queensland in the interwar years. Penality came to focus upon concerns
about gender ordering and, in particular, those conceptions of “familied”
masculinity and femininity which (supposedly) enhanced human wellbeing
and social stability during a time of economic and social distress. Yet
while state punishment selectively sanctioned and worked towards
reinforcing particular masculine and feminine constructs, the “correc-
tional” outcomes for various categories of male and female offenders in
terms of their lived experiences were very different: determined not only
by gender but also along lines of age and family arrangements. Three
major strands of penal philosophy — the domestic, work ethic and medical
approaches — coexisted between the wars and their overlap, seen
perhaps more clearly in the case of women, compounded the gendered
nature of “penality as welfare”. Attention to specific regimes in the social
history of punishment reminds us of the need to appreciate the often
complex interplay between systems of punishment and welfare.
During the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the imprisonment rate for men in
Queensland increased substantially while the incarceration of women showed
considerable decline. These apparently contradictory trends happened also at a time
when, over the longer 20 years period between the wars, the proportion of prisoners
overall declined steadily relative to the State’s population. Closer inspection suggests,
however, that different groups of men and women offenders experienced these
trends in very different ways. This study investigates the complexity of prison trends
and the social purposes of punishment by exploring how penal ideologies in the
interwar years served in the quest to enhance social stability and family welfare (or
wellbeing) during a time of economic and social distress. Penality, or state correc-
tional policies and practices, came increasingly to sanction particular concepts of
masculinity and femininity. The masculine and feminine models and ideals that
received special corrective scrutiny and enforcement were those reflecting the
(supposedly) gender-specific characteristics of “familied” men and women, models
perceived to be the foundation of family cohesion at a time of wider public crisis.
Address for correspondence: Kerry Wimshurst, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice,
Griffith University, Brisbane QLD 4111, Australia.
308
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VOLUME 35 NUMBER 3 2002 PP. 308–329
PUNISHMENT,WELFARE AND GENDER ORDERING IN QUEENSLAND, 1920–1940
Exploring the sociohistorical functions of penality in Australia takes us into
relatively uncharted waters since the history of punishment is an under-developed
field (for surveys, see Finnane, 1991; Garton, 1996). Research has tended to focus
on the 19th century. Even here one is hard pressed to identify major works that
explore, for example, the “birth of the prison” in the second half of the century, or
the emergence of forms of punishment and incarceration that might have been
alternative to the prison. Rather, the focus has been on convictism in the first half
of the 19th century and, in particular, the fairly recent attention given to convict
women (see Daniels, 1998). Research on the social history of 20th-century penality
remains very limited. Garton (1986) suggests that a network of “carceral” institu-
tions such as clinics for the insane and other asylums had emerged by the early
years of the 20th century, supplementing and perhaps later even replacing the
central place of the prison. However, the body of research needed to develop such
interpretations, especially across the wider arena of punishment and not just that
pertaining to imprisonment, does not exist as yet.
In fact, the few discussions of the interwar years reflect views similar to overseas
studies. The limited work done on state penal systems here, usually in the form of
“celebratory” or “administrative” histories, portrays the interwar years essentially as
some sort of uneventful interregnum (Ramsland, 1996) or as a time of complete
stagnation in terms of “significant” developments in correctional paradigms
(Thomas & Stewart, 1978). Against the background of economic crisis and fiscal
restraints, the period 1920–40 is seen as a rather dreary intermission between the
late-19th century expansion of “new” purpose-built prisons for men and women,
and the movements for prison “reform” that came later in the 20th century.
Yet closer inspection suggests that it is possible to identify in early 20th-century
Australia a tapestry of trends in the social aims of punishment regimes.
Commentators were certainly talking about the purposes of official punishment
during the interwar years. Finnane (1997) refers to that contemporary discourse as
a bricolage of ideas. That is, he points to an assortment of antiquated and progres-
sive ideas that might (or might not) have had an impact on what happened in
prisons and on other forms of official punishment. Pratt (1992) has explored the
multiple economic and cultural determinants of penal policy in New Zealand prior
to the Second World War. However, there remains little research to date focusing
upon particular penal regimes in Australia which compares the rhetoric of penality
with what was actually happening on the ground in terms of the lived experiences
of offenders. This empirical study of penality in Queensland contrasts the rhetoric
with the reality. It does this by situating a specific regime within the context of
recent historical and criminological theorising about modern punishment.
Themes and Theoretical Concerns:The Uses of Penality
Social Structuring
While welfare and penal systems might appear to deal with different spheres of
human experience, developments in one system at specific historical points are
often inextricably related to changes in the other. Institutions of punishment such
as reformatories and prisons for the past century have claimed that they can play a
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309
KERRY WIMSHURST
central role in the social, physical and moral rehabilitation of their inmates. Youth
justice is a fairly obvious example of the ongoing conflation and confusion between
notions about welfare and punishment (see e.g., O’Connor, 1992). Garland’s
(1985) seminal work explored the way that the development of the correctional
ideal of rehabilitation in early 20th-century Britain, an ideal which was charac-
terised by notions of “classification”, “treatment” and “therapy” of inmates, also
paralleled the rise of liberal ideas normally associated with the emergence of the
embryonic welfare state. In addition, whatever the anticipated impact of rehabilita-
tion on individuals, modernist corrective processing with its stated objective of
tailoring programs to individual needs, was also seen to enhance (potential)
citizenship. Individual offenders were encouraged to feel they had not been
banished from society, but that they still belonged to a larger collective to which
they would return, In short, that there was life after prison.
This study of the interwar years considers the punishment-welfare link by
exploring a variation on the “citizenship” theme. During the interwar years, social
commentators believed that families might be better held together and their
wellbeing enhanced, in various ways, by officialdom’s endorsement of “familied”
masculinity and femininity. Penality was to play an important role here along with
other, perhaps more obvious, institutions of persuasion such as schooling, the print
media, radio and the cinema. Thus the prison and other official punishments were
part of a broad and complex enterprise in the 1920s and 30s where penality was one
institution among others concerned with social structuring and gender ordering.
Systems of punishment underscore a multiplicity of wider social ordering
processes (see Garland, 1990; Hudson, 1996; Ignatieff, 1985), although traditional
labour history more often portrays the role of criminal justice during the Great
Depression years mainly as one of repression and social class control. The spectre of
imprisonment during those years might or might not have been central to the
exercise of class control in the interests of ruling elites. However, when the
Comptroller-General (of prisons) urged fellow citizens to show compassion for
vulnerable young men forced into a life of petty crime because of economic disloca-
tion, there is no reason to assume that such sentiments were simply smokescreens for
ruling class interests. These young men, he implied, should in normal circumstances
be looking to a brighter future as breadwinners and heads of households: a hope now
undermined both by a prison record and little prospect of regular employment on
their release (Queensland Parliamentary Papers; QPP, Vol 1, 1927, p. 1150).
Critical interpretations of the role of criminal justice in the 1930s focus upon
the police who are usually portrayed as indifferent to the suffering of the dispos-
sessed (e.g., Costar, 1989), or brutal in their repression of street marches and other
forms of dissent (e.g., Scott, 1993). Yet the social role(s) of penality in the interwar
years can be seen as much wider than the instrument of class repression. Penality
was active...
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