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The criminal class and the making and breaking of Australia

1991; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 24; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/000486589102400204

1837-9273

John Braithwaite,

Australian History and Society

The articles by Oxley and Garton make fascinating reading for contemporary crimonologists; the editorial board mernbers of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology responsible for this special issue rnust be congratulated for this exercise in widening our disciplinary horizons. Both articles I have been asked to comment on are about just who these convicts were who first settled our country. Garton asks whether Manning Clark was right to describe them as members of a professional criminal class. Oxley asks what the women were like: were generations of historians correct to describe them as whores and prostitutes, violent, depraved, blacker in many ways than tbe male convicts? Let us deal with the wornen first. Oxley's article shows that only a minority of the convict wornen were prostitutes. Even among these, the prostitution would seem to have been more episodic than professionalised sornetbing that had to be resorted to occasionally to survive. With respect to the women, Oxley shows that Clark was in error with the image he painted of convicts as professional and habitual criminals: 'crime is an occupation just as plumbing, carpentering, etc, are occupations for other mernbers of the working classes' (Clark, 1956: 133). What Clark and so many others among the great Australian historians were responding to was a popular borugeois conception of criminality. It is the conception one would get for the 20th century through watehing television cop shows, reading the press releases of Ted Pickering or the criminological texts of Bob Bottom. One thing 20th century criminological research has shown rather clearly is that tbe criminological stories that become popular and enduring are tbose that paint in tbe blackest black characters tbat are quite grey (eg, Cohen,.1973). What about Ned Kelly, you rnight say? Ned, one might argue, is a character from a more wbolesome Australian era in terms of a capacity to see grey as grey tban either tbe present Australia or the pre-Victorian England tbat constituted our criminal class. A little more on this era later. So what were the female convicts like according to Oxley's research? Tbey were mostly episodic thieves. Tbe people they stole from, tbe people who caused tbem to be transported, were in a Iarge proportion of cases their employers. Two-thirds of them were transported for first offences. Tbis is not to deny tbat some even among these first offenders may have committed a great many nasty crimes. Some were murderers. But Oxley's data seems persuasive that these were a small minority. Tbere is Iittle evidence of criminaI professionalisrn among the wornen who came out on the ships. Not only does what we know of the frequency of their stealing fail to support this, but also Oxley points out that the things that were stolen were often small in number and low in value ablanket, a pair of gloves, even a prayer book. What kind of whore was this who would steal a prayer book? Oxley concludes that the wornen were rarely Artful Dodgers of tbe crirninal class who systematically worked the crowd. Tbey were more often 'individuals making criminal decisions based upon availability, need or even a sense of ernployment