‘Impossible to Detain ... without Chains’?: The use of Restraints on Aboriginal People in Policing and Prisonsxs

Harman, Kristyn; Grant, Elizabeth

doi:10.1080/14490854.2014.11668538

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…35 Later in the nineteenth century, groups of Aboriginal prisoners were chained together by the neck while being taken into captivity and sometimes throughout their sentences. 36 Such practices continued into sufficiently recent times to be well attested by photographic records. 37 Similarly, criminal trials like that depicted in Board B occurred, sometimes resulting in judicial execution.…”

Section: James Bonwick's the Last Of The Tasmanians; Or The Black Wamentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Aboriginal people were taken captive from the first year of settlement when in 1788 Governor Arthur Phillip issued instructions that an Aboriginal person be captured and restrained with a view to having the captive become an intermediary between the colonists and local Aboriginal people in Sydney. 34 As the British incursion onto Aboriginal lands continued apace, the means through which they were restrained became increasingly sophisticated. Over time, at least 90 Aboriginal men were incorporated into the colonial convict system; in this and other contexts, Indigenous people were frequently restrained by handcuffs, leg irons and imprisonment.…”

Section: James Bonwick's the Last Of The Tasmanians; Or The Black Wamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Other picture boards in Van Diemen’s Land: The recovery of lost illustrations of frontier violence and relationships

Brodie¹,

Harman²

2017

Aboriginal History

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Section: James Bonwick's the Last Of The Tasmanians; Or The Black Wamentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: James Bonwick's the Last Of The Tasmanians; Or The Black Wamentioning

confidence: 99%

Other picture boards in Van Diemen’s Land: The recovery of lost illustrations of frontier violence and relationships

Brodie¹,

Harman²

2017

Aboriginal History

Self Cite

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“…Roebourne Gaol became the largest in the northwest and the second largest in WA (after Fremantle) after it was extended in 1896 (Bosworth, 1991, p. 17). One large cell was added with iron rings built into the walls to which Aboriginal prisoners from across the Kimberley were chained at night (Harman & Grant, 2014, pp. 157, 178).…”

Section: Criminal Law and The Frontiersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Postcolonial churn and the impact of the criminal justice system on Aboriginal people in Western Australia, 1829–2020

Roscoe

Godfrey

2022

Journal of Criminology

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This article analyses how the criminalisation and imprisonment of Aboriginal people operated as tools of colonisation in Western Australia (WA) in the nineteenth century, and how this shaped the postcolonial criminal justice system. The racialised double standard embedded in the colonial foundations of state institutions, including the criminal justice system, rippled across generations of Aboriginal people: a reiterative and disruptive process that we dub the ‘postcolonial churn’. This term, adapted from the ‘carceral churn’, describes the destabilising mobilisations embedded in carceral and settler-colonial logics over the long term. It uses data from archival prison registers (Rottnest Island 1838–1931 and Roebourne Prison 1908–1961), as well as historic court, police and newspaper data to map the use of the criminal code in protecting and expanding colonial property rights in the original waves of settler-colonisation. WA is an outlier among the Australian colonies: it was the largest in terms of size (2,642,753 km2), the last colony to receive European convicts (1850–1868), and the last to be awarded self-government (1890). This created a situation where the British government dictated policy for legal forms of subjugation of Aboriginal people at the frontier (first for resisting pastoral industry, later as workers in it) which butted up against localised extra-legal violence by police and settlers. We can trace this dichotomy between policy and practice in the development of surveillance and policing of Aboriginal populations across time and settler-colonial space due to the protracted pace of frontier ‘development’. Revealing the mediated historical aspects of structural racism is crucial to analysing the persistence of racialised policing in postcolonial settings and understanding why, despite repeated inquiries into mistreatment of Aboriginal people, institutional inertia remains.

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‘Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make’: Bare Life and the Carceral Archipelago in Colonial and Postcolonial Societies

Blagg

Anthony

2018

Human Rights and Incarceration

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‘Impossible to Detain ... without Chains’?: The use of Restraints on Aboriginal People in Policing and Prisonsxs

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Other picture boards in Van Diemen’s Land: The recovery of lost illustrations of frontier violence and relationships

Other picture boards in Van Diemen’s Land: The recovery of lost illustrations of frontier violence and relationships

Postcolonial churn and the impact of the criminal justice system on Aboriginal people in Western Australia, 1829–2020

‘Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make’: Bare Life and the Carceral Archipelago in Colonial and Postcolonial Societies

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