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Convict Surveillance and Reform in Theory and Practice

Jeremy Bentham vs New South Wales
Surveillance et réforme du système pénitentiaire : Théorie de Jeremy Bentham et pratique en Nouvelle-Galles du Sud
Matthew Allen

Résumés

Grâce à Michel Foucault, le Panoptique de Jeremy Bentham est devenu le symbole de la prison moderne. Mais Foucault – ainsi que la plupart de ses lecteurs – oublie le fait qu'une grande partie des écrits panoptiques de Bentham s'attachait à opposer de manière critique sa prison idéale à la réalité de la transportation vers la Nouvelle-Galles du Sud. Parmi ses nombreuses critiques, Bentham a porté une attention particulière au problème de la réforme du bagne. Son argument central était la nécessité de la surveillance pour assurer une véritable réforme, et qu'une telle surveillance était impossible dans le système de prison ouverte propre à la Nouvelle-Galles du Sud. Ce lien entre réforme et surveillance était une caractéristique omniprésente dans la pensée de Bentham, reflétée dans sa promotion d’un Etat qui centraliserait l'information ainsi que dans son corpus plus large sur la réforme pénale. Dans cet article, je fais l'historique de sa théorie de la surveillance réformatrice et je soutiens que Bentham, qui écrivait depuis Londres, a mal évalué l'importance de la surveillance pour la colonie pénitentiaire. Au moins en théorie, les condamnés de la Nouvelle-Galles du Sud étaient soumis à des systèmes de surveillance étendus, et l'échec de ces systèmes dans la pratique démontre, par ricochet, les limites des projets, largement hypothétiques, de Bentham.

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Notes de l’auteur

This article was originally published as a book chapter: Matthew Allen, ‘Convict Surveillance and Reform in Theory and Practice: Jeremy Bentham vs New South Wales’, in Histories of Surveillance from Antiquity to the Digital Era: The Eyes and Ears of Power, ed. by Andreas Marklund and Laura Skouvig (Routledge, 2021), pp. 70–86. Routledge’s permission to republish is gratefully acknowledged.

Texte intégral

Introduction

  • 1 Bentham, Jeremy, Panopticon ; or, The Inspection-House (Dublin : T. Payne, 1791), pp. 1-2. For more (...)
  • 2 Bentham, J., Panopticon, p.iii.

1Jeremy Bentham is famous as a pioneer of modern surveillance, most notably for his panopticon, a circular prison with a central tower than ensured inmates were always watched. In his initial explanation of the panopticon, he first devised the “inspection principle” – a theory of oversight and transparency underlying both the prison’s design and many of his broader ideas about government – and argued that surveillance was the key to effective punishment and in particular to ensuring that prisoners were genuinely reformed.1 The panopticon was both a theoretical ideal of perfect surveillance and a practical design for a prison that maximised inspection, in the interests of reform, through a “simple idea in Architecture.”2 He stressed that:

  • 3 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 2-3.

the more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the persons who should inspect them, the more perfectly will the purpose of the establishment have been attained. Ideal perfection, if that were the object, would require that each person should actually be in that predicament, during every instant of time. This being impossible, the next thing to be wished for is, that, at every instant, seeing reason to believe as much, and not being able to satisfy himself to the contrary, he should conceive himself to be so.3

  • 4 Anne Brunon-Ernst identifies ‘four distinct Panopticons’ that Bentham discussed between 1786 and 18 (...)

2This distinction between the theory and practice of surveillance was implicit throughout his extensive writings on the panopticon, notably in his critical analysis of rival forms of punishment.4

  • 5 Semple, Janet, Bentham’s Prison : A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary (Oxford : Clarendon Press, (...)

3Bentham spent over a decade fruitlessly attempting to persuade the British government to build panopticons under his management, but his plans were never realised, largely because the government decided to transport convicts to New South Wales (NSW).5 As a consequence, Bentham undertook a detailed critical analysis of the penal colony and much of his argument centred on its practical inadequacy as a reformatory, which he attributed to its failure to come close to the ideal of perfect surveillance. This chapter uses Bentham’s critique to historicise his theory of reformative surveillance, contrasting it with contemporary surveillance practices in early NSW. I argue that Bentham misunderstood the significance of surveillance to the penal colony and failed to appreciate the difference between surveillance in theory and practice. In fact NSW was designed around an intensive system of convict surveillance and the failure to implement this effectively reflected limitations of early modern policing which Bentham himself had drawn attention to. Convicts were not subject to perfect surveillance in NSW, but as Bentham well knew, neither were deviants in England.

Bentham vs New South Wales

  • 6 These letters were written, printed and privately circulated in 1802 but only published in 1812 as  (...)
  • 7 Atkinson, Alan, ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Rum Rebellion,’ Journal of the Royal Australian Historical (...)
  • 8 Schofield, Philip, Utility and Democracy : The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford : Oxford (...)

4In 1802, Bentham addressed a series of public letters to the Home Secretary, Lord Pelham, which sought to demonstrate that transportation was a flawed means of punishing convicts, and that NSW was illegally governed.6 The latter argument played a significant role in Australian history, helping inform the political campaign against unchecked gubernatorial authority that culminated in the removal of the colony’s fourth Governor, William Bligh, in a military coup – commonly known as the rum rebellion – in 1808.7 More broadly, as Phillip Schofield has suggested, these letters form part of a significant “transition” in Bentham’s thought, towards political radicalism as he became increasingly critical of the corrupt and lawless nature of eighteenth-century British government and its privileging of “sinister interest” over the common good.8 But they are also important to the history of surveillance.

  • 9 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, p. 5. For more on the context of the letter see : Semple, J. (...)
  • 10 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 7-8.

5Bentham was inspired to write by a Home Office review of the relative merits of penitentiaries and transportation as systems of punishment, and he reacted against its recommendation that existing plans to build prisons (potentially panopticons under Bentham’s management) should be abandoned given the “improved state” of the penal colony.9 To dispute this claim he sought to show that transportation, especially to a dedicated penal colony like NSW, was inferior to imprisonment, particularly in a panopticon. NSW was flawed in relation to all five possible “ends of penal justice”: setting an “Example” to others, “Reformation” of the offender, preventing recidivism through “Incapacitation”, providing “Compensation” to the victim, and ensuring “Economy” for the state.10 He explored each of these “ends" in some detail, but I will focus on his discussion of reformation because it is in this context that Bentham was most explicit about the problem of surveillance in NSW.

  • 11 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 10-11.
  • 12 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 9-11.

6Crucial to his argument, was his critical comparison of the perfect surveillance of convicts within his proposed panopticon, with the “radical incapacity of … any efficient system of inspection” in NSW.11 He theorised that “Inspection” was “the only effective instrument of reformative management” since delinquents, especially criminals, “may be considered as persons of unsound mind … [or] a sort of grown children” who required “particularly close” surveillance to ensure that they behaved.12 But such close inspection was impossible in practice in NSW, an open prison where convicts had considerable freedom.

  • 13 Collins, David, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, 2 vols. (London : T. Cadell Jr (...)
  • 14 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 19-20.
  • 15 For his evidence, drawn from Collins, see : [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 20-24 ; Second Letter to (...)
  • 16 For historical surveys of theories and practices of punishment in the period see : Ignatieff, Micha (...)
  • 17 Bentham, J., Third Letter to Pelham, pp. 5-8.

7This theoretical critique was supported by a profusion of evidence, largely drawn from the recently published accounts of the colony, written by its first Judge-Advocate, David Collins.13 Bentham argued that Collins’ Account demonstrated that NSW was a failure since only a tiny minority of the convicts were reformed, and “the longer they stay in that scene of intended reformation, and the more they are left to themselves … the worse they are”.14 He cited numerous examples of crime and disorder, arguing that due to the impossibility of adequate inspection, NSW corrupted, rather than reformed its convicts. In particular, drunkenness was “universal”, religious instruction was “odious and easily eluded”, and the convicts were frequently idle and refused to work.15 He contrasted the absence of inspection – and consequently reformation – in NSW with a series of alternative and superior punishments including the earlier system of transportation to the American colonies, modern penitentiaries in Philadelphia and New York, confinement with hard labour in the hulks on the Thames, and, best of all, his proposed panopticon.16 Thus Bentham concluded that NSW was “supremely unfavourable” as a reformatory, “by reason of the promiscuous and unbounded association [of convicts], joined to much opportunity of sloth and to unbounded drunkenness”, all of which were largely due to the impossibility of close surveillance.17

  • 18 Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, 220 ; Causer, ‘Panopticon Prison.’

8Bentham’s arguments in these letters were both dogmatic and self-serving.  As a prospective contractor of a government-funded panopticon, for which he had already been advanced £36,000, he stood to profit substantially if transportation ceased, and he came to his analysis of the colony with preconceived views about convict reform.18 To support his theory of reformative surveillance, Bentham depended on a partial reading of Collins’ works, which he ransacked for examples of corruption, illegality and disorder, while ignoring evidence that did not suit his agenda. Just as importantly, writing from London and without access to the correspondence between colonial officials and the Home Office, Bentham was not in the best position to closely scrutinise colonial affairs. As a consequence, he failed to adequately recognize the considerable efforts that the colonial authorities had made to subject convicts to surveillance. The Governors and their Officials sought to supervise convict labour, police their conduct, control their movements and keep detailed records about them; they even designed the early settlements with convict visibility in mind. At least in theory, convict reform was closely monitored in NSW.

9In this chapter I will use Bentham’s critique of NSW to explore the relationship between the theory and practice of surveillance, specifically in reference to the vexed problem of reforming convicts. First I relate Bentham’s critique to his earlier (pre-1802) writing on punishment, reform and surveillance, demonstrating the development of his thinking and its underlying consistency. Then I contrast Bentham’s ideas with the reality of controlling convicts in the penal colony, in order to historicise both Bentham’s theories and colonial practices. I argue that, at the time Bentham wrote, convicts in NSW were actually subject to a remarkably comprehensive system of surveillance which sought to constantly monitor, discipline and record them. The problems which Bentham identified were not theoretical but practical and reveal the fundamental challenge of close surveillance given the constraints of contemporary technology, and governmentality.

Theorising and Historicising Surveillance

  • 19 Lyon, David, Surveillance Studies : An Overview (Cambridge : Polity, 2007), pp. 48-50.
  • 20 Dandeker, Christopher, Surveillance, Power and Modernity : Bureaucracy and Discipline from 1700 to (...)
  • 21 Giddens, Anthony, The Nation-State and Violence : Volume Two of A Contemporary Critique of Historic (...)

10This argument builds on the growing scholarship on surveillance in general and on Bentham and the panopticon in particular; and is grounded in the historical context of surveillance thought and practice around the turn of the nineteenth century. Surveillance takes many forms and emerges from many distinct traditions, including labour management, modern state bureaucracy, criminal justice and concern for visibility.19 Christopher Dandeker argues that all forms of surveillance involve one or more of three distinct “activities:” “collection and storage of information,” “supervision of … people or objects” and “monitoring the behaviour of those under supervision.”20 Bentham is such a significant theorist of surveillance – and the panopticon such a formidable symbol of his theories – in part because his ideas encompass all of those traditions, and all these activities are at stake in the panopticon. However his interest in bureaucratic surveillance and information gathering is peripheral to the panopticon but becomes clearer in some of his other writing from the 1790s, notably his Police Bill, discussed below. As such, this chapter helps to historicise the rise of what Anthony Giddens has termed “information societies” and Edward Higgs the “information state” – modern nation-states with centralised systems of surveillance – showing both that Bentham was an early advocate for such centralised and bureaucratic surveillance and that authorities in early NSW were able to implement these modern systems in ways that were impossible in contemporary Britain.21

  • 22 Brunon-Ernst, Anne, ‘Introduction,’ in Beyond Foucault : New Perspectives on Bentham’s Panopticon, (...)
  • 23 The scholarly debate is best summarised in : Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, pp. 2-13.
  • 24 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 29-30.
  • 25 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, p. 43. But on unconstitutionality see especially : Bentham, (...)

11The panopticon also illustrates an important problem for Bentham scholars: how to reconcile his authoritarian and liberal ideas.22 For many readers of Bentham, the panopticon demonstrates Bentham’s authoritarian instincts and his preference for security over liberty.23 But the inspection principle was both a means of controlling the subjects of the disciplinary gaze, and a call for radical transparency: anyone should be able to visit and inspect the panopticon since “the doors of all public establishments ought to be, thrown wide open to … the great open committee of the tribunal of the world.”24 Both discipline and transparency are relevant to Bentham’s critique of NSW. For Bentham, the penal colony failed to impose discipline largely due to a lack of close surveillance of convicts, and it was unconstitutional in part because it was non-transparent – “no accessible spot more distant” – which facilitated abuses of convict and ex-convict rights.25 But superficially, Bentham’s arguments are inconsistent since authoritarian surveillance of convicts is married to a liberal insistence on rights. This chapter will help to resolve this inconsistency, by clarifying the extent of Bentham’s ideas about surveillance before 1802.

  • 26 This useful distinction between Bentham’s panopticon and Foucault’s panopticism is adopted from Bru (...)
  • 27 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979), pp. 200-9. Quot (...)
  • 28 Laval, Christian, ‘From Discipline and Punish to the Birth of Biopolitics,’ in Beyond Foucault : Ne (...)
  • 29 On convict punishment see : Finnane, Mark, ‘Punishing the Body. Corporal Punishment and Changing Se (...)

12The problem of the two Benthams is in large part a consequence of the pervasive influence of Michel Foucault, his lengthy critical engagement with Bentham, and his concepts of panopticism and governmentality.26 For Foucault in Discipline and Punish, the panopticon was more than an innovative prison that combined exclusion of the deviant with control through surveillance; it was also a “laboratory of power,” the ideal form of a wider panopticism, an increasingly de-institutionalized, universal and all-encompassing technology of discipline, that symbolised modern disciplinary power.27 But, as Christian Laval has shown, Foucault’s engagement with Bentham evolved over time and he increasingly understood Bentham as the key thinker of modern governmentality, the “techniques and procedures for directing human behaviour” in order to empower the liberal state and achieve its ends.28 These two Foucaultian readings of Bentham reflect the distinction I have stressed between surveillance theory and surveillance practice: panopticism depends on the broader theoretical implications of the panopticon, while governmentality is concerned with the specific practices by which people are inspected and recorded. NSW was not an expression of panopticism in Foucault’s sense – the absence of constant surveillance meant that convicts were not disciplined but subject to brutal and exemplary punishments – but it was informed by contemporary governmentality, especially systems of bureaucracy and police.29

  • 30 Higgs, Information State, ch. 3, quotation on p. 36. For a summary of efforts at centralised reform (...)
  • 31 Quotation from : Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London : J. Knapton [etc.], (...)
  • 32 Dodsworth, F. M., ‘The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England : Discipline, Reformation, Supe (...)
  • 33 There is a vast literature on the modernisation of British police but see for example : Beattie, J. (...)
  • 34 On vagrancy and the control of the poor see : Hitchcock, Tim, ‘Vagrancy in Law and Practice under t (...)

13Early modern Britain already had many systems of public surveillance often predicated on ideas similar to Bentham’s inspection principle, although in general they were localised and based on a series of “overlapping networks exercising authority”, not centralised in a modern Weberian information state, in part due to elite resistance to the growth of central government.30 Traditional ideas about what was referred to as police – “the regulation and government of a city or country, so far as regards the inhabitants” – were amateur, hierarchical, paternalistic and parochial, but they were also frequently effective in managing rural communities.31 But there were extensive demands for reform of these traditional systems around the turn of the nineteenth century, many of which called for systematisation, centralisation and professionalism.32 As J.M. Beattie and others have demonstrated police reform was put into practice at a local level, especially in London, often involving increasing the presence of constables as a form of preventative surveillance to prevent offending.33 Outside of criminal justice, there were also systems of information collection, supervision and monitoring – especially restrictions on movement – embedded within the legal management of vagrancy, the relationship between masters and servants and the poor law.34 Thus governmental systems were available for surveillance of convicts, even in an open prison like NSW, but they had never previously been imposed on society as a whole.

Bentham and Reformative Surveillance

  • 35 Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, ch. 2.
  • 36 Bentham, Jeremy, Rationale of Punishment, trans. Richard Smith, (London : Robert Heward, 1830), I, (...)
  • 37 Bentham, J., Punishment, p. 48.
  • 38 Bentham, J., Punishment, pp. 163-4.
  • 39 Bentham, J., Punishment, pp. 114-7.
  • 40 Bentham, J., Punishment, pp. 122-8.

14Bentham’s theory of reformative surveillance developed out of his broader ideas about government and particularly the problem of punishment, on which he was working for the best part of two decades prior to publishing Panopticon in 1791.35 In manuscripts from the 1770s and 1780s, Bentham outlined his utilitarian theory of punishment, arguing that since punishment was always “an evil” its main justification must be “general prevention” of crime but that in addition it should seek to prevent recidivism through “incapacitation, reformation, and intimidation” of the offender.36 He clarified his understanding of convict reform distinguishing between deterrence from crime, and real reform, in that the latter required “a change of character and moral dispositions,” and criticised most contemporary forms of punishment for their failure to promote such real reform of criminals.37 He identified only two kinds of genuinely reformative punishment: hard labour and some forms of imprisonment. Labour helped reform both because it was “necessary that the workmen should be under the eye of overseers” and because it had “a positive tendency to make them better … [through] force of habit”.38 Imprisonment was also potentially reformative but only when combined with additional “gradual and protracted” hardships imposed by means of solitude, darkness and hard diet which would inspire “penitent reflections” and encourage “attention and humility to the admonitions and exhortations of religion.”39 In stark contrast the common policy of “promiscuous association of prisoners” in prisons was “directly opposed to their reformation,” strengthening rapacious motives, weakening restraining sanctions and teaching prisoners criminal habits.40

  • 41 Bentham, J., Panopticon, p. 3, pp. 21-2, pp. 25-30.
  • 42 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 48-9, pp. 67-8. On the importance of industriousness to reformation se (...)
  • 43 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 35-6.
  • 44 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 141-61. Quotations on p. 141, p. 142, p. 151.

15In the panopticon letters (written in 1787) Bentham adapted this understanding of reform to his new inspection principle. Surveillance thus informed the design of the panopticon: the central inspection tower and “most effectual contrivances for seeing without being seen [sic]” maximised both the perception and the reality of surveillance for prisoners and guards.41 Key features of his plan were explicitly designed to aid prisoner reform, by training convicts in habits of industry. Thus he advocated making prisoners’ work interesting and meaningfully rewarding because “among working men … [there is] no test of reformation so plain or so sure as the improved quantity and value of their work.”42 Interestingly in these initial letters he also stressed the way that the design guaranteed solitude for prisoners, in accordance with the widespread belief that such solitude was an essential stimulus to penitence and reform.43 But by the time he wrote the postscripts (published in 1791), he advocated “mitigated seclusion,” arguing that isolation was only useful as a temporary measure for “breaking the spirit” and used permanently would lead to “gloomy despondency, or sullen insensibility” in criminals.44 He also made his first published reference to the nascent colony of New South Wales, pointing to what he saw as clear evidence that the convicts were not reforming:

  • 45 Bentham, J., Panopticon, p. 424. These comments probably originated in an unpublished manuscript of (...)

2000 convicts of both sexes, and 160 soldiers … jumbled together in one mass, and mingling like beasts: in two years, from fourteen marriages, eighty-seven births; the morals of Otaheite introduced into New Holland by the medium of Old England.45

  • 46 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 526-33. Quotation on p. 526.
  • 47 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 534-9. On Betham’s understanding of the balance between liberty and se (...)

16Also significant were Bentham’s ideas about providing for prisoners after their term had expired. He suggested that to “ensure … at the least expense, their good behaviour and subsistence” they should only be discharged into the army, the navy, under the bond of a “responsible householder,” or to a private contractor who took on this risk in exchange for a cheap supply of labour, binding the ex-convicts to him as a master over servants.46 Bentham saw this aspect of his plan as a means of testing “inward reformation” and assuring against “absolute incorrigibility” and he justified the disregard of convict rights as necessary to the security of society, and better than the de facto practice in NSW where no provision was made for returning convicts to England once their sentences expired or supporting them in the colony.47 Thus a crucial feature of the panopticon scheme was to promote and ensure genuine reformation of offenders through close surveillance both during and after their sentence, and this aim was sufficiently important to justify repressive measures.

  • 48 For the details of Bentham’s campaign for a government contract to build a panopticon see : Semple, (...)
  • 49 Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, pp. 177-87. On tattooing cf Bentham’s earlier proposal for identifyin (...)

17Bentham’s ideas about reformatory surveillance continued to develop in the intervening years between Panopticon and his critique of NSW, largely in relation to his vain hopes of enrichment through a government contract to build and run a panoptical penitentiary.48 Significantly for my argument, Bentham expanded on his plans for managing convicts after their release, suggesting that he should also be contracted to operate what he now referred to as a metasylum, a private institution, also panoptical, for employing ex-convicts. In relation to this plan he devised an intricate system of bureaucratic surveillance to ensure that their reformation was genuine. All convicts were to be tattooed with a permanent identifier, on release they had to carry a certificate of freedom, and convict records would be kept much more methodically, both within the panopticon itself, and after their sentences expired, by the Governor of the metasylum, the parish authorities and the county sessions.49

  • 50 On the broader meaning of the term ‘police’ at this time see : Dodsworth, F. M., ‘The Idea of Polic (...)
  • 51 For more on Colquhoun’s proposals for police see : Colquhoun, Patrick, A Treatise on the Police of (...)
  • 52 House of Commons, Report of the Select Committee … Relative to the Establishment of a New Police in (...)

18Most significantly, Bentham also expanded on his theory of surveillance in relation to reform of police (meaning local government more broadly).50 His panopticon proposal was publicly discussed by the 1798 Select Committee on Finance which devoted its hearings to considering means of reducing government expenditure on criminal justice. The Committee heard from both Bentham and the London magistrate and police reformer, Patrick Colquhoun, who were allied in their support for aligned reforms to systems of punishment and police.51 Bentham’s submission to the committee consolidated his plans, and stressed that he would “make himself personally responsible for the reformatory Efficacy of his Management” by paying a fine for every prisoner who reoffended after release, while publishing regular reports so that his management was properly subject to public scrutiny.52 Colquhoun presented his ideas for police reform, which centred on a system of licensing to control the trade in second-hand goods and reduce property crime, managed by a centralised London police board. But he also fully endorsed Bentham’s criticisms of existing forms of punishment and told the Committee that in his experience as a magistrate:

  • 53 Report, p. 68.

I have seldom or never known an Instance of [convicts released from the hulks] Return to honest Industry; on the contrary, many of them have been detected immediately afterwards in the Commission of new Crimes, from which it may be inferred, that this Species of Punishment has not answered the Intention of the Legislature, so far as relates to the Reformation of the Convicts.53

  • 54 Report, p. 78.
  • 55 Report, pp. 23-4.

19He made a similar claims about New South Wales, stating that “none” of the convicts who had returned from the penal colony to London, “are known to me to be employed in any creditable Pursuit; on the contrary, all who have come within my Knowledge are either at this Moment Thieves upon the Town, or have been executed for new Offences.”54 Drawing on Colquhoun and Bentham’s evidence the Committee concluded that the current approach to punishing criminals failed to reform them because they were “exposed to the Contagion of such immoral Example” and endorsed Bentham’s proposal for “a new and less expensive mode for employing and reforming convicts.”55

  • 56 Bentham, Jeremy, Writings on Political Economy, Volume III : Preventive Police, ed. Michael Quinn, (...)
  • 57 Bentham, J., Police, pp. 89-90.
  • 58 Bentham, J., Police, p. 133.
  • 59 Bentham, J., Police, p. 136. Quinn discusses the originality of these proposals noting precedents f (...)

20Following the report of this committee, Bentham acted as a draftsman, writing two bills – one for a Thames River police and a second for a board of police revenue (the Police Bill) – that reflected and expanded on Colquhoun’s ideas. These bills were never enacted but the Police Bill in particular is highly revealing about the scope of Bentham’s thought about surveillance.56 As Bentham explained while its ostensible aim was requiring a series of potential dealers in stolen goods to take out licenses and be subject to “controul and regulation” by a centralised Police Board, a secondary aim was “obtaining information.”57 Expanding on this point Bentham suggested that “two great branches of Government, Revenue and Police [sic]” were symbiotic, both relying on and producing political information or “statistics.”58 His Police Bill proposed two new forms of national information collection and publication: “intelligence of individual acts of delinquency” to be collected in a regular “Police Gazette;” and an annual “Calendar of Delinquency” aggregating this and other criminal justice data.59

  • 60 Bentham, J., Police, pp. 194-6.

21Bentham thus envisaged a national network of information collection and dispersal – a centralised information state and a form of panopticism – as a means of applying the inspection principle to society at large. The Police Gazette would be provided free to all magistrates, police commissioners (a new office he proposed) and license holders of all kinds (who would have proliferated under this plan). These licensees as well as postmasters, all town or parish officials, and clergy of all denominations (including dissenters, Catholics and Jews) could be required to either prominently display or publicly read notices in the Gazette about serious crimes.60 Bentham specifically saw this as a means of preserving security by monitoring potentially subversive groups – notably non-conforming congregations and Jacobins – in the context of the revolutionary era. Beyond this, the Gazette could also serve as an organ of official propaganda, combatting “the democratical [sic] papers” and their “attacks upon the vitals of the constitution:”

  • 61 Bentham, J., Police, pp. 321-30. Bentham’s authoritarian argument here was that propaganda was more (...)

Over and above the direct uses of the Police Gazette … is [its potential] as an instrument for the propagation and maintenance of social dispositions and affections, and for the preservation of tranquillity, harmony and loyalty among the great body of the people … Convey’d to … every place of public meeting for the lower classes without exception, the Police Gazette would … guard the minds of the susceptible and thoughtless multitude.61

  • 62 Bentham, J., Police, pp. 334-5.

22For the Calendar of Delinquency, he required all officials involved in the criminal justice system (and potentially all those involved in administering the poor laws), under threat of fines, to submit comprehensive information and copies of all official documents to the Police Board. This crime data would feed into the Gazette, but the Board would also compile an annual set of national crime statistics, far more comprehensive than the current localised and inconsistent records. Bentham saw this as a contribution to the “science of political arithmetic” allowing “a practical test as well as index of the utility of any new measure” of reform because its effects could be accurately measured in the changing rates of crime.62

  • 63 As Quinn points out, they also clash with his later commitment to transparency and a free press, hy (...)
  • 64 Colquhoun, P., Police. For more on the legislative impasse around police reform see : Phillips, Dav (...)

23Bentham’s ambition in these proposals is only matched by their political and practical naivety.63 His legislation, let alone his larger plans for a system of national police could never have passed through a parliament dominated by country gentlemen, fiercely protective of their local authority and liberties. Indeed Colquhoun’s much more practical suggestions for a uniformed, centralised and professional police force for London were rejected by parliament well into the 1820s.64 Moreover, even if they had been enacted, it seems highly unlikely that any such efficient and centralised system of informational surveillance could have operated throughout England given the institutions of the time. Bentham’s utopian plans depended on widespread literacy, administrative diligence, and consistency of practice which were unknown to a society still largely governed at a local level by amateur magistrates. But more importantly for my argument, Bentham’s proposed information state came far closer to realisation in NSW than England.

24Overall, Bentham’s surveillance corpus up to 1802 also demonstrates significant consistency. He justified all surveillance in terms of security but distinguished between the surveillance of prisoners, former prisoners and the public in terms of reciprocity and transparency. Public surveillance should be open and transparent but convict surveillance was unilateral and invisible, because this uncertainty helped inspire reform.

Surveillance in Practice in Convict NSW

  • 65 Bentham, J., Panopticon, 2-3.
  • 66 Collins, D., Account, vol. 1, 501-2.

25Bentham’s criticisms of NSW had a real basis. Since NSW was not a total institution like the Panopticon, but an open prison, panopticism was impossible: convicts could not be kept: “constantly … under the eyes” of the authorities.65 Moreover, Collins’ Account is in large part a litany of crimes and punishments which provides abundant evidence to support Bentham’s thesis. Collins concluded his first volume lamenting that while he had “occasionally had the gratification of recording the return of principle in some [convicts] … it has oftener been [my] task to show the predilection for immorality, perseverance in dissipation, and inveterate propensity to vice, which prevailed in many others”.66 Leaving aside the accuracy of Collins’ judgement on convict reformation which were shaped by both his character and his position as chief judicial officer, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that many convicts continued to offend in NSW and that efforts to control them through surveillance often failed. However, it is also abundantly clear that the colonial authorities aspired to closely monitor the convicts through systems of oversight, policing, control of movement and record-keeping based on local British practice; reflecting contemporary governmentality.

  • 67 ‘Phillip’s Instructions,’ 25 Apr. 1787, Historical Records of New South Wales (Hereafter HRNSW), ed (...)
  • 68 ‘Phillip’s Commission,’ HRNSW (Sydney : Government Printer, 1893-1901), vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 63.
  • 69 ‘Phillip to Lord Sydney,’ 15 May 1788, HRNSW, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 123

26Close inspection of convicts was a feature of the planning of the settlement, the instructions issued to its Governors, and their Orders on the ground. The official instructions to Arthur Phillip, the first Governor, ordered him to “proceed to the cultivation of the land, distributing the convicts for that purpose in such manner, and under such inspectors or overseers, and under such regulations as may appear to you to be necessary.”67 Similarly, his Commission as Governor authorised him to appoint “justices of the peace, coroners, constables and other necessary officers” which should have ensured that the traditional forms of police inspection operated in NSW.68 However, in his first report on the new colony, Phillip noted the difficulty of motivating convicts since they were “naturally indolent [and] having none to attend them but overseers drawn from amongst themselves … work go[es] on very slowly.”69 Expanding on “the great want of proper persons to superintend the convicts” he noted:

  • 70 ‘Phillip to Lord Sydney,’ 16 May 1788, HRNSW, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 138.

The officers [of the marine corps] are not only few in number, but most of them have declined any interference with the convicts … I requested soon after we landed that officers would occasionally encourage such as they observed diligent, and point out for punishment such as they saw idle or straggling in the woods … but the officers … [asserted] that they were not sent out to do more than the duty of soldiers.70

  • 71 For more on early policing in NSW see my : ‘Convict Police and the Enforcement of British Order : P (...)
  • 72 ‘Regulations,’ 9 Nov. 1789, HRNSW, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 292-3.

27In consequence, Phillip resorted to the expedient of appointing convicts and former convicts to serve as watchmen and constables and this developed into a sophisticated system of police.71 The Watch were ordered to “patrol at all hours in the night, and to visit such places as may be deemed necessary … either by entrance into any suspected hut or dwelling, or by such other manner as may appear expedient.” The emerging town of Sydney was “divided and numbered” into districts “under the particular inspection of one person, who shall be judged qualified to inform himself of the actual residence of each individual in his district, as well as of his business, connections, and acquaintance.”72

  • 73 ‘General Order,’ 9 Nov. 1796, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 165-6.
  • 74 ‘General Order,’ 2 Nov. 1795, HRNSW, vol. 2, p. 322 ; ‘General Order,’ 30 Nov. 1796 ; ‘General Orde (...)
  • 75 ‘Hunter to Portland,’ 12 Nov. 1796, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 174-6 ; Collins, D., Account, vol. 1, p. 450
  • 76 ‘General Order,’ 27 Aug 1798, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 472-3 ; ‘Hunter to Portland’, 1 Nov 1798, HRNSW, v (...)
  • 77 ‘Hunter to Portland,’ 10 June 1797, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 216-7 ; Atkinson, A., Europeans, p. 264-5, p (...)
  • 78 Howe, Robert, ed., New South Wales General Standing Orders (Sydney : Government Press, 1802) ; Sydn (...)

28Phillip’s successor, Governor John Hunter, extended and elaborated this system of police surveillance. He divided Sydney and the inland settlement of Parramatta into divisions and ordered the free inhabitants (largely former convicts) of each to elect “three of the most decent and respectable men” to serve as watchmen and “apprehend all night-walkers, all disorderly and suspicious persons … interrogate all who are found idling about in their division, not being inhabitants thereof, and oblige them to give an account of themselves.”73 To facilitate this close monitoring of movement, Hunter issued a series of Orders requiring former convicts to carry a “certificate of freedom” and current convicts a “passport” from their master or a magistrate, which they had to produce when confronted by a constable or face arrest.74 He also implemented careful systems of information management, monitoring and recording the population. He wrote to the British authorities requesting updated and accurate records of convict sentences and had the constables produce a register of the inhabitants of every dwelling, the owners of every boat and lists of individuals in possession of firearms.75 He also established the tradition of mustering convicts on the Sabbath, both to ensure their attendance at Church during the service “as a most necessary and essential part of [the] civil police” but also as a means of monitoring the convicts and discovering runaways.76 The ambitions of this potential information state are demonstrated by the practice of disseminating official orders which were read aloud to the military at their barracks and to the convicts during their weekly musters.77 Indeed the first book published in the colony was a collection of the “General Standing Orders” and when a colonial newspaper was published (from March 1803) it was “Published by Authority”, subject to official censorship, and served precisely the aims of Bentham’s Police Gazette: disseminating orders, warning about crimes and publishing official propaganda.78

  • 79 ‘General Order,’ 20 Mar 1797, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 198-9. On the failure to control movement see : Ka (...)
  • 80 ‘Portland to Hunter,’ 18 Sep. 1798, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 489-90.

29These systems often failed in practice. For example, Hunter was soon obliged to add a bureaucratic requirement that constables viewing a pass should date and countersign it to prove their vigilance while his successors constantly lamented their inability to control convict movement.79 But they demonstrate the emerging ambition for an information state – at least in the context of a penal colony – and that existing British governmental practices could potentially facilitate it. Furthermore, these intersecting systems of convict surveillance were not simply a colonial expedient but were regularly praised and increasingly demanded by the British authorities. In 1798 the Home Secretary wrote to Hunter praising his “system of police” but calling for more frequent reports on convict conduct from the subordinate officers “to the establishment of future order and regularity, and … better to apprehend [offenders].”80 In this, he reflected similar aspirations to Bentham’s Police Bill and metasylum: information management and careful inspection was necessary to ensure reform.

  • 81 For more on the political symbolism of cleared land in NSW see : Karskens, Grace, ‘Nefarious Geogra (...)
  • 82 Karskens, Grace, The Colony : A History of Early Sydney (Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2009), pp (...)
  • 83 Karskens, G., The Colony, pp79-82 ; ‘Phillip to Grenville,’ 17 Jul. 1790, HRNSW, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. (...)

30It is also worth noting, that Bentham’s concern for ensuring visibility through architecture was shared by the colonial authorities. While the work of clearing the land was time-consuming and laborious it was a priority for the early Governors who aspired to create an orderly settlement with clearly delineated spaces for convicts, military and civil officials and sight-lines so that the latter could more easily monitor the former.81 As Grace Karskens has shown, Phillip developed detailed plans for a prospective town he labelled “Albion” which she characterises as “a spatial fantasy about control and beauty,” in stark contrast to the actual town of Sydney which developed through the “pragmatic structures and everyday movements” of the colonists.82 Phillip’s desire for an architecture of order, facilitating surveillance, came closer to fruition in the second settlement, subsequently known as Parramatta, built as a centre of agricultural production (and hence convict labour), up-river from Sydney. Phillip laid out the township, initially known as Rose Hill, as a kind of model village, a series of evenly spaced convict huts, along a wide boulevard stretching from the Governor’s mansion on the hill, down to the river. The plan ensured that the Governor’s house overlooked his convict workers, serving, in Karsken’s terms, as “a material expression of rank and hierarchy, a means of surveillance and control.”83 Again, in practice, convicts were often invisible in the landscape, but the idea of utilising principles of visibility to ensure discipline was certainly a feature of early NSW.

Panopticism, Governmentality and Practicality

  • 84 Bentham, J., 2nd Letter to Pelham, pp. 26-7, p. 41, p. 50, pp. 60-1.
  • 85 Bentham, J., 2nd Letter to Pelham, pp. 24-5.

31Bentham was aware of some of the efforts at convict surveillance in NSW since they were discussed in detail by Collins who had a leading role in administering them as Judge-Advocate. Indeed, much of his criticism of NSW depended upon their failure in practice, not their theoretical vigour. He noted with glee the constables’ “extreme negligence, or complicity with … malefactors” and the destruction of the colony’s first church in an act of deliberate arson.84 In the service of his attack on the colony he even criticised surveillance in NSW as illegal. For example, he noted the system of passports but characterised it as a “sort of system of general imprisonment within the rules [sic] subject to endless vexations, oppressions, and abuses”.85 But this criticism is consistent with his overall thought on surveillance. His problem with the penal colony was that such practices were applied indiscriminately, to free, ex-convict and convict alike, though similar flaws seem implicit in his own ideas for police reform in England.

32These colonial systems of convict surveillance were grounded in British precedent and reflect late eighteenth-century British governmentality, but were applied more systematically and comprehensively to the penal colony under the rule of a Governor. Ironically, the nature of the penal colony meant that the kind of centralised authoritarian controls which Bentham proposed at the height of the revolutionary panic of the 1790s were theoretically feasible and efforts were made to implement them in governing convicts. But such surveillance did not work as planned in NSW and could never achieve the kind of close inspection that Bentham saw as essential to convict reform.

33Thus this chapters reminds historians of surveillance of the need to keep the distinction between theory and practice clearly in mind. Bentham’s surveillance writings encompass more than his designs for a panopticon and at times approach the kind of panopticism which Foucault saw as so significant to modernity. But such ideas had their roots in early modern practices of surveillance – both inspection and bureaucracy – which reflected an existing governmentality best embodied in the idea of police as an all-encompassing system of local government. As NSW illustrates this ideal of surveillance was simultaneously desired by authorities and impossible to effectively put into practice. Limited by the institutions and technologies of the time, colonial Governors were unable to keep convicts under close inspection and their reported failures fed Bentham’s critique. But the same problems would doubtless have been true of Bentham’s own proposals for a centralised information state and a panoptical reformatory. He is perhaps fortunate that he was denied the opportunity to put them into practice.

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Notes

1 Bentham, Jeremy, Panopticon ; or, The Inspection-House (Dublin : T. Payne, 1791), pp. 1-2. For more on the panopticon as a reformatory see below.

2 Bentham, J., Panopticon, p.iii.

3 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 2-3.

4 Anne Brunon-Ernst identifies ‘four distinct Panopticons’ that Bentham discussed between 1786 and 1830 : ‘the “prison-Panopticon”, the “pauper-Panopticon”, the “chrestomathic-Panopticon” and the “constitutional-panopticon.”’ See : Brunon-Ernst, Anne, ‘Deconstructing Panopticism into the Plural Panopticons,’ in Beyond Foucault : New Perspectives on Bentham’s Panopticon, ed. Anne Brunon-Ernst (Routledge, 2016), pp. 17–41, p. 21. In this chapter I am only concerned with the first of these since it is the only one which aims at convict reform.

5 Semple, Janet, Bentham’s Prison : A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1993).

6 These letters were written, printed and privately circulated in 1802 but only published in 1812 as : Bentham, Jeremy, Panopticon versus New South Wales (London : R. Baldwin, 1812). The Bentham Project at University College, London, has recently produced comprehensive editions, based on Bentham’s original manuscripts, which contain additional material that is significant for my argument. They also provide editorial introductions which explain the complex history of these writings, their circulation and publication. See : Bentham, Jeremy, Writings on Australia, III. Letter to Lord Pelham, ed. T. Causer and P. Schofield, pre-publication version, (The Bentham Project, 2018) ; Writings on Australia, IV. Second Letter to Lord Pelham, ed. T. Causer and P. Schofield, pre-publication version (The Bentham Project, 2018) ; Writings on Australia, V. Third Letter to Lord Pelham, ed. T. Causer and P. Schofield, pre-publication version (The Bentham Project, 2018) ; Writings on Australia, VI. A Plea for the Constitution, ed. T. Causer and P. Schofield, pre-publication version (The Bentham Project, 2018).

7 Atkinson, Alan, ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Rum Rebellion,’ Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 64, no. 1 (1978) : 1–13. For more on Bentham’s significance to the rebellion see : Atkinson, Alan, The Europeans in Australia : A History. Volume One : The Beginning (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1997), ch. 13 ; Karskens, Grace and Waterhouse, Richard, ‘”Too Sacred to Be Taken Away” : Property, Liberty, Tyranny and the “Rum Rebellion,”’ Journal of Australian Colonial History 12 (2010) : 1–22 ; Benton, Lauren and Lisa Ford, Rage for Order : The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850 (Cambridge, MA. : Harvard University Press, 2016), pp. 31–43 ; Allen, Matthew , ‘Distilling Liberty : Reconsidering the Politics of Alcohol in Early New South Wales,’ Australian Historical Studies 50, no. 3 (2019) : 1–15.

8 Schofield, Philip, Utility and Democracy : The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 344-6.

9 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, p. 5. For more on the context of the letter see : Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, pp. 230-41 ; Causer, Tim, ‘”The evacuation of that scene of wickedness and wretchedness” : Jeremy Bentham and the panopticon prison versus New South Wales, 1802-3,’ Journal of Australian Colonial History 21 (2019) : 1–25.

10 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 7-8.

11 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 10-11.

12 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 9-11.

13 Collins, David, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, 2 vols. (London : T. Cadell Jr. & W. Davies, 1798-1802). For more on Bentham’s reliance on Collins, see : Jackson, R. V., ‘Theory and Evidence : Bentham, Collins, and the New South Wales Penal Settlement,’ Australian Journal of Politics and History 39, no. 3 (1993) : 318–329. For Collins’ own history see : ‘Collins, David (1756–1810),’ in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Centre of Biography : Australian National University, 1966).

14 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 19-20.

15 For his evidence, drawn from Collins, see : [First] Letter to Pelham, pp. 20-24 ; Second Letter to Pelham, pp. 8-16, pp. 21-39, pp. 62-73. Re colonial drunkenness and its significance for Bentham’s critique see : Allen, Matthew, ‘Alcohol and Authority in Early New South Wales : The Symbolic Significance of the Spirit Trade, 1788-1808,’ History Australia 9, no. 3 (August 2012) : 7–26.

16 For historical surveys of theories and practices of punishment in the period see : Ignatieff, Michael, A Just Measure of Pain : The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (London : Pantheon Books, 1978) ; Randall McGowen, ‘The Problem of Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England,’ in Penal Practice and Culture, 1500-1900 : Punishing the English, ed. Paul Griffiths and Simon Devereaux (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 210–31. For Bentham’s position in these debates see : Rodman, Barbee-Sue, ‘Bentham and the Paradox of Penal Reform,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 29, no. 2 (1968) : 197–210 ; Bedau, Hugh, ‘Bentham’s Theory of Punishment : Origin and Content,’ Journal of Bentham Studies 7 (2004).

17 Bentham, J., Third Letter to Pelham, pp. 5-8.

18 Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, 220 ; Causer, ‘Panopticon Prison.’

19 Lyon, David, Surveillance Studies : An Overview (Cambridge : Polity, 2007), pp. 48-50.

20 Dandeker, Christopher, Surveillance, Power and Modernity : Bureaucracy and Discipline from 1700 to the Present Day (Cambridge : Polity, 1990), p. 37.

21 Giddens, Anthony, The Nation-State and Violence : Volume Two of A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (London : Polity Press, 1985), pp. 178-80 ; Higgs, Edward, The Information State in England : The Central Collection of Information on Citizens since 1500 (Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave, 2003). Higgs criticises Giddens for his schematic view of Western modernity as sharply distinguished from its past, notably in relation to the capacity for information-gathering, arguing that the English information state developed steadily over a much longer period, but largely at a local level until the late nineteenth-century, a view I endorse (ch. 2).

22 Brunon-Ernst, Anne, ‘Introduction,’ in Beyond Foucault : New Perspectives on Bentham’s Panopticon, ed. Anne Brunon-Ernst (Routledge, 2016), pp. 1–13 ;

23 The scholarly debate is best summarised in : Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, pp. 2-13.

24 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 29-30.

25 Bentham, J., [First] Letter to Pelham, p. 43. But on unconstitutionality see especially : Bentham, J., Plea for the Constitution.

26 This useful distinction between Bentham’s panopticon and Foucault’s panopticism is adopted from Brunon-Ernst, A., ‘Deconstructing Panopticism,’ pp. 19-20.

27 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979), pp. 200-9. Quotation on p. 204.

28 Laval, Christian, ‘From Discipline and Punish to the Birth of Biopolitics,’ in Beyond Foucault : New Perspectives on Bentham’s Panopticon, ed. Anne Brunon-Ernst (Routledge, 2016), pp. 43–60. On governmentality see : Rose, Nikolas, O’Malley, Pat and Valverde, Mariana, ‘Governmentality,’ Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2, no. 1 (2006) : 83–104. Quotation from Foucault, on p. 43.

29 On convict punishment see : Finnane, Mark, ‘Punishing the Body. Corporal Punishment and Changing Sensibilities. Execution,’ in Punishment in Australian Society (Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 108–39.

30 Higgs, Information State, ch. 3, quotation on p. 36. For a summary of efforts at centralised reform and resistance to them see : Innes, Joanna and Burns, Arthur, ‘Introduction,’ in Rethinking the Age of Reform : Britain 1780-1850, ed. Joanna Innes and Arthur Burns, (New York : Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 1–70.

31 Quotation from : Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London : J. Knapton [etc.], 1756), vol. 2, [unpaginated]. On the effectiveness of local government surveillance see : Higgs, E., Information State, pp. 40-4 ; Eastwood, David, Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700-1870 (Basingstoke : Macmillan, 1997).

32 Dodsworth, F. M., ‘The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England : Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no. 4 (2008) : 583–604 ; McMullan, John L., ‘The Arresting Eye : Discourse, Surveillance and Disciplinary Administration in Early English Police Thinking,’ Social & Legal Studies 7, no. 1 (March 1998) : 97–128.

33 There is a vast literature on the modernisation of British police but see for example : Beattie, J. M., Policing and Punishment in London 1660-1750 : Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror (Oxford New York : Oxford University Press, 2001) ; Emsley, Clive, The English Police : A Political and Social History, 2nd ed. (London : Longman, 1996) ; Dodsworth, F.M., ‘Idea of Police.’

34 On vagrancy and the control of the poor see : Hitchcock, Tim, ‘Vagrancy in Law and Practice under the Old Poor Law,’ Social History 38, no. 4 (2013) : 518–20. On Masters and Servants law see : Hay, Douglas, ‘England, 1562-1875. The Law and Its Uses,’ in Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955, ed. Douglas Hay and Paul Craven (Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2014), pp. 59–116.

35 Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, ch. 2.

36 Bentham, Jeremy, Rationale of Punishment, trans. Richard Smith, (London : Robert Heward, 1830), I, pp. 19-22. This work, originally published in French by Etienne Dumont (in 1811) and then retranslated into English (in 1830) was largely based on Bentham’s manuscripts from the 1770s and 1780s, but included some later materials to fill out gaps. I will only cite the sections drawn from these early manuscripts and not the discussion of transportation or the panopticon, which Dumont largely drew from the Panopticon and the ‘Letters to Lord Pelham’, discussed elsewhere. For more detail on this publication history see : Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, ch. 2. For a briefer statement of these ideas, published at the time see : Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London : T. Payne, 1789), p. 198.

37 Bentham, J., Punishment, p. 48.

38 Bentham, J., Punishment, pp. 163-4.

39 Bentham, J., Punishment, pp. 114-7.

40 Bentham, J., Punishment, pp. 122-8.

41 Bentham, J., Panopticon, p. 3, pp. 21-2, pp. 25-30.

42 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 48-9, pp. 67-8. On the importance of industriousness to reformation see : Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, pp. 153-6.

43 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 35-6.

44 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 141-61. Quotations on p. 141, p. 142, p. 151.

45 Bentham, J., Panopticon, p. 424. These comments probably originated in an unpublished manuscript of 1791 : Bentham, Jeremy, Writings on Australia, I. New Wales, ed. T. Causer and P. Schofield, pre-publication version, The Bentham Project, 2018 ; Causer, T., ‘Panoptical Prison’.

46 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 526-33. Quotation on p. 526.

47 Bentham, J., Panopticon, pp. 534-9. On Betham’s understanding of the balance between liberty and security see : Stephen G. Engelmann, ‘”Indirect Legislation” : Bentham’s Liberal Government,’ Polity 35, no. 3 (2003) : 369–88. Bentham was wrong about support for emancipists in early NSW. They often received land grants and sometimes even convict servants.

48 For the details of Bentham’s campaign for a government contract to build a panopticon see : Semple, J., chs. 6-11.

49 Semple, J., Bentham’s Prison, pp. 177-87. On tattooing cf Bentham’s earlier proposal for identifying tattoos in the unpublished manuscript ‘Indirect Legislation’ (1782) on which see : Bozzo-Rey, M., Brunon-Ernst, A., and Quinn, M., ‘Special Issue : Indirect Legislation : Jeremy Bentham’s Regulatory Revolution. Introduction,’ History Of European Ideas 43, no. 1 (2017) : 1–10.

50 On the broader meaning of the term ‘police’ at this time see : Dodsworth, F. M., ‘The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England : Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no. 4 (2008) : 583–604.

51 For more on Colquhoun’s proposals for police see : Colquhoun, Patrick, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (London : C. Dilly, 1796) ; Dodsworth, F. M., ‘The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England : Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no. 4 (2008) : 583–604.

52 House of Commons, Report of the Select Committee … Relative to the Establishment of a New Police in the Metropolis, &c and the Convict Establishment (London : R. Shaw, 1799), pp. 82-3.

53 Report, p. 68.

54 Report, p. 78.

55 Report, pp. 23-4.

56 Bentham, Jeremy, Writings on Political Economy, Volume III : Preventive Police, ed. Michael Quinn, pre-publication version (The Bentham Project, 2018). Michael Quinn has explained the significance of this work, and argued, convincingly, that the key ideas originated with Bentham and not Colquhoun : Quinn, Michael, ‘Bentham on Preventive Police : The Calendar of Delinquency in Evaluation of Policy and the Police Gazette in Manipulation of Opinion,’ International Criminal Justice Review (In Press, 2019) : unpaginated.

57 Bentham, J., Police, pp. 89-90.

58 Bentham, J., Police, p. 133.

59 Bentham, J., Police, p. 136. Quinn discusses the originality of these proposals noting precedents for each, but stressing Bentham’s innovations. Quinn, M., ‘Preventative Police’.

60 Bentham, J., Police, pp. 194-6.

61 Bentham, J., Police, pp. 321-30. Bentham’s authoritarian argument here was that propaganda was more effective than direct repression in preserving national security.

62 Bentham, J., Police, pp. 334-5.

63 As Quinn points out, they also clash with his later commitment to transparency and a free press, hypocrisy he explains in relation to Bentham’s fears of French and English Jacobins during the 1790s. Quinn, M., ‘Preventative Police’.

64 Colquhoun, P., Police. For more on the legislative impasse around police reform see : Phillips, David, ‘”A New Engine of Power and Authority” : The Institutionalisation of Law-Enforcement in England, 1780-1830,’ in Crime and the Law : The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500, ed. Geoffrey Parker, Bruce Lenman, and V. A. C. Gatrell (London : Europa Publications, 1980), pp. 155–89 ; Paley, Ruth and Reynolds, Elaine A., ‘Politicians, Parishes and Police : The Failure of the 1812 Night Watch Bill,’ Parliamentary History 28, no. 3 (2009) : 375–91 ; Eastwood, D., Government and Community, 139-47.

65 Bentham, J., Panopticon, 2-3.

66 Collins, D., Account, vol. 1, 501-2.

67 ‘Phillip’s Instructions,’ 25 Apr. 1787, Historical Records of New South Wales (Hereafter HRNSW), edited by F. M. Bladen (Sydney : Government Printer, 1893-1901) vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 87.

68 ‘Phillip’s Commission,’ HRNSW (Sydney : Government Printer, 1893-1901), vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 63.

69 ‘Phillip to Lord Sydney,’ 15 May 1788, HRNSW, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 123

70 ‘Phillip to Lord Sydney,’ 16 May 1788, HRNSW, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 138.

71 For more on early policing in NSW see my : ‘Convict Police and the Enforcement of British Order : Policing the Rum Economy in Early New South Wales,’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, online prepublication (2020). Similar expedients (employing trusted convicts as managers) seem to have been used in supervising convict workers on which see : William M. Robbins, ‘Management and Resistance in the Convict Work Gangs, 1788–1830,’ Journal of Industrial Relations 45, no. 3 (2003) : 360–77.

72 ‘Regulations,’ 9 Nov. 1789, HRNSW, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 292-3.

73 ‘General Order,’ 9 Nov. 1796, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 165-6.

74 ‘General Order,’ 2 Nov. 1795, HRNSW, vol. 2, p. 322 ; ‘General Order,’ 30 Nov. 1796 ; ‘General Order,’ 20 Mar. 1797, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 182-3, pp. 198-9 ; Collins, D., Account, vol. 1, p. 229, p. 487 ; vol. 2, p. 26.

75 ‘Hunter to Portland,’ 12 Nov. 1796, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 174-6 ; Collins, D., Account, vol. 1, p. 450.

76 ‘General Order,’ 27 Aug 1798, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 472-3 ; ‘Hunter to Portland’, 1 Nov 1798, HRNSW, vol. 3, p. 505. For more on compulsory attendance at church see : Atkinson, A., The Europeans in Australia : A History. Volume One : The Beginning (Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 179-80.

77 ‘Hunter to Portland,’ 10 June 1797, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 216-7 ; Atkinson, A., Europeans, p. 264-5, p. 307.

78 Howe, Robert, ed., New South Wales General Standing Orders (Sydney : Government Press, 1802) ; Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (Sydney : George Howe, 1803-1842) ; Byrnes, J. V., ‘Howe, George (1769–1821)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography ; Walker, R. B., The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803-1920 (Sydney  : Sydney University Press, 1976), pp. 1-5.

79 ‘General Order,’ 20 Mar 1797, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 198-9. On the failure to control movement see : Karskens, Grace , ‘”This Spirit of Emigration” : The Nature and Meanings of Escape in Early New South Wales,’ Journal of Australian Colonial History 7 (2005) : 1–34.

80 ‘Portland to Hunter,’ 18 Sep. 1798, HRNSW, vol. 3, pp. 489-90.

81 For more on the political symbolism of cleared land in NSW see : Karskens, Grace, ‘Nefarious Geographies : Convicts and the Sydney Environment in the Early Colonial Period,’ Tasmanian Historical Studies 11 (2006) : 15-27.

82 Karskens, Grace, The Colony : A History of Early Sydney (Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2009), pp. 72-4. For more on Phillip’s town planning see : Proudfoot, Helen, ‘Fixing the Settlement upon a Savage Shore : Planning and Building,’ in A Difficult Infant : Sydney Before Macquarie, ed. Graeme Aplin (Sydney : NSW University Press, 1988), pp. 55–71.

83 Karskens, G., The Colony, pp79-82 ; ‘Phillip to Grenville,’ 17 Jul. 1790, HRNSW, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 362-3 ; Tench, Watkin, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (London : G. Nicol & J. Sewell, 1793), pp. 78-9 ; Kass, Terry, Liston, Carol, and McClymont, John, Parramatta : A Past Revealed (Parramatta : Parramatta City Council, 1996), ch. 2.

84 Bentham, J., 2nd Letter to Pelham, pp. 26-7, p. 41, p. 50, pp. 60-1.

85 Bentham, J., 2nd Letter to Pelham, pp. 24-5.

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Matthew Allen, « Convict Surveillance and Reform in Theory and Practice »Revue d’études benthamiennes [En ligne], 21 | 2022, mis en ligne le 30 mai 2022, consulté le 28 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudes-benthamiennes/9797 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etudes-benthamiennes.9797

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Matthew Allen

University of New England, Armidale, Australia  

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