Discuss the impact Maconochie had on Norfolk Island.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

One of the most well-documented such penal colonies was Norfolk Island, 1,000 miles off the Australian coast. Established in 1788 as a place designated for prisoners from England and Australia, it was regarded as a brutal and violent island prison where inmates were poorly fed, clothed, and housed and were mistreated by staff and their fellow inmates (Morris, 2002). Morris, in his semi-fictional account of Alexander Maconochie’s effort to reform Norfolk, notes that Machonochie, an ex-naval captain, asked to be transferred to Norfolk, usually an undesirable placement, so that he could put into practice some ideas he had about prison reform. He served as the warden there from 1840 to 1844. What was true in this story was that “in four years, Maconochie transformed what was one of the most brutal convict settlements in history into a controlled, stable, and productive environment that achieved such success that upon release his prisoners came to be called ‘Maconochie’s Gentlemen’” (Morris, 2002, book jacket). Maconochie’s ideas included the belief that inmates should be rewarded for good behavior through a system of marks, which could lead to privileges and early release; that they should be treated with respect; and that they should be adequately fed and housed. Such revolutionary ideas, for their time, elicited alarm from Maconochie’s superiors, and he was removed from his position after only 4 years. His ideas, however, were adopted decades later when the concepts of “good time” and parole were developed in Ireland and the United States. In addition, his ideas about adequately feeding and clothing inmates were held in common by such reformers, who came before him, as John Howard and William Penn and those who came after him, such as Dorothea Dix.