England's Policy of Transportation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Englands Policy of Transportation - Essay ExampleThe rebellion in the colonies had do it impossible to use them as a penal colony and in 1788 England began to transport mass numbers game game of these criminals to Australia. This dark period in Englands criminal justice history saw the transportation of 160,000 people to the unpolluted (Sheehan, Miller, & Hudzik, n.d.). Many were children, some were elderly, and most had been convicted of only very peasant offences. Englands Policy of Transportation was a wicked immorality, unjustly perpetrated in an ineffective attempt to control Englands lower class and their petty crimes.The harshness of Britains reception to crime is understandable as upper class citizens feared the pickpockets and thieves and demanded action from the government. However, to send any person, not to consult a child, across the sea with no hope of returning strips them of their last remaining possession, their cultural identity. The initial voyage contained 700 convicts whose number include a 9 year old boy convicted of stealing and an 82 year old woman caught lying under oath (Martz, 2000). These hapless passengers were thrown together with a brutal adult population to endure abuse and worse. According to Dunlop (1997),All prisoners were treated alike, and conditions were harsh stately living conditions, disease, hunger, floggings and general neglect were prevalent and many convicts died en route or upon arrival. The severity of these actions were as appalling in the 16th century as they are today. Though men outnumbered women 6 to 1, women were ofttimes the target of criminal convictions in an effort to increase the female population in Australia (Martz, 2000). Innocent women could be convicted, not because of their crime, but because of their gender. Men in the new penal colony demanded wives and the British system was anxious to provide them. Providing women to the penal colony was viewed as a method of adding stability to the s ystem and many were laboured into prostitution upon landing. Often, they would be taken prisoner by male inmates or sold into sexual thrall (Martz, 2000). The injustice of condemning a woman to a life of slavery for political convenience is rarely rivalled in modern history.The years of practising a Policy of Transportation did little to impact or funk Britains criminal population. The root causes of crime were poverty and a well-defined class structure. The failure to address these problems left the threat of transportation an impotent weapon on the fight on crime. Though the horrors of a animation of banishment may have deterred some criminals to be less aggressive in their activity, the rising numbers eliminated any possible gain that deterrence might have. The relatively small numbers of violent criminals included in transportation verifies that the policy did little to correct Englands crime problem.Sending women, children, or anyone else to a spirit of banishment away from all they know is an immoral act when done in response to minor crimes against property. Sentencing them to a lifetime of misery and possible death was an injustice of vast proportions. Transporting women, unfairly convicted for the purpose of creating a class of sexual slaves, was inexcusable even in the context of the times. That it was an ineffective effort resulting from a war against the lower class residents of the slums