A Social History of Corrective Services in New South Wales
'With Just But Relentless Discipline' traces the story of the New South Wales prison system from 1797 when the penal colony established county goals in Sydney and Parramatta - the first attempt to systematically deal with crime committed on Australian soil.
There has been a remarkable continuity in the two hundred years since. The establishment and growth of the New South Wales prison system coincided with a new philosophy of criminal rehabilitation in the British Isles and elsewhere. The influence of this was such that from the earliest days this history is one of systematic prison reform and its consequences.
This book is about more than policy. Using a wealth of sources including diaries, letters and contemporary newspaper features, John Ramsland has recreated accurately and vividly the daily life and work of prisoners and warders - both the guarded and guards.
It also examines the history of criminal behaviour in New South Wales and closely examines largely forgotten crimes that caused great anxiety among law abiding citizens in times past including the bushranger menace, the larrikin pushes and the underworld matriarchs of depression-era of Sydney.
