Convict Transportation and Life-Course Offending

Abstract

<p>As is now well known, a large part of the British penal system was "offshored" from the start of the seventeenth century. Between 1615 and 1939, the British transported at least 378,000 men, women, and children (Anderson 2016). Following the curtailment of a nascent system of convict transportation to the America colonies (which ended in 1785), several penal colonies were established in New South Wales (1788–1840), Van Diemen's land (1803–53), and later the Swan colony in Western Australia (1850–68). Between 1788 and 1868, over 160,000 convicts were transported to New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, and Western Australia following conviction in British, Irish, and imperial courts.</p>