Aims
The objective of this activity is to deepen student understandings of sentencing practices by encouraging critical thinking about the purposes of the sanctions imposed upon offenders.
Task
- Transcription: Students complete the transcription of at least one historical record from Victoria’s prison system on the Criminal Characters website. A guide advising students on how to complete the transcription through the online system is available as part of the activity’s resources. Instructors should also complete a transcription prior to having their students make the attempt in order to familiarise themselves with the process and provide support. While transcribing the information (and before they have submitted the completed transcription), students should make notes about the prisoner in the offender profile worksheet provided as a resource for the activity. Approximate time to allow for this step: 30 minutes.
- Parole board: Students break into small groups of 4-5 students to enact a scenario where they are members of a parole board that is meeting to discuss the possibility of early release for the offenders whose profiles they have collected. In each case, members should discuss whether the sentence imposed on the offender seems appropriate to their offence and background, and what the motivations for enacting this mode of punishment were likely to have been. The group should then vote to determine whether they would recommend early release for such a prisoner, and how much time they would remit from the sentence. Approximate time to allow for this step: 30 minutes.
- Reflection: Students report back to the class on the issues raised during their discussion, and the various factors that impacted upon their decisions. Supporting materials for instructors guiding the discussion can be found under Extensions below. Approximate time to allow for this step: 20 minutes.
Extensions
Theories of punishment: It is useful if students have some introduction to different theories of punishment that can enrich the discussion during their ‘parole board’ meetings. In addition to such information being imparted through lectures or set readings, a Sentencing Handout is available under the Resources section below that provides a quick overview that students can have on hand as a reference material during their discussions.
Crime context: The prison records provide some information about offenders and offences on which students can base a discussion of the appropriateness of their sentences. However, this information can be valuably supplemented by having the students locate further details about the offender and the crime for which they were convicted on the Trove newspaper database. A guide to researching in the Trove newspaper collection can be found under Resources below. This can be an especially useful exercise for encouraging student discussions of victim perspectives on sentencing, by providing details that illuminate the type of impact the crime was likely to have had upon them. Time permitting, instructors might consider having students meet as the ‘parole board’ before researching on Trove and then again afterwards, to consider whether their perspectives on any of the offenders changed based upon new information learnt. Conducting a Trove search and reading the relevant results would require around 20 minutes additional time.
Discussion questions: This exercise should be used to prompt critical reflection about the aims and function of sentencing and imprisonment. Some questions instructors might invite students to comment upon include: What were the factors that were likely to influence an offender’s sentence historically? What purpose does imprisonment/continued imprisonment of these individuals serve? How does it accord with the general aims of sentencing? What purpose does parole serve? How does it fit into systems of dealing with crime and the idea of rehabilitation? Are there alternative forms of punishment that would have been more suitable in the case of any of the offenders discussed? Are there alternative penalties to imprisonment that students would advocate for in general?
Contemporary comparison: Another point of reflection for students would be whether the types of sentences observed in the historical cases they examined diverged from the types of sentences handed down in respect to similar offences today. A useful reference for informing such discussion is the website of Victoria’s Sentencing Advisory Council, particularly its section on sentencing statistics. Students might then be invited to consider how sentencing considerations may have changed over time.
Mode of delivery
Face-to-face: Provided students have access to computers or digital devices, all elements of the task could be completed during around 90 minutes of class-time. If students have no access to digital technologies – either at home or in class – a work-around would be for the instructor themselves to complete a number of offender profiles for distributing to students in class.
Blended: This task lends itself to a blended learning approach, in which students complete the transcription work and offender profile worksheet as a pre-class activity. If Trove newspaper researching is incorporated into the task, this can also form part of the pre-class work. The parole board exercise and reflective discussion then take place face-to-face. In order to ensure students complete the pre-class work, it should be made clear to them from the outset how this work will be used for the parole board scenario in class and that they will need to have a completed profile to participate in this class activity. Students are also more likely to comply with completing pre-class activities if they regularly form part of the week-to-week administration of the subject.
Online: There are various ways that this activity can be undertaken in an online-only unit. Instructors can designate students to small groups in which to enact the parole board discussion in an online live chat or through posts on a discussion forum. Alternatively, students might be asked as individuals to write a reflection about whether they would parole the offender whose information they transcribed, explaining the factors that influenced their decision, and then post this on the discussion forum.
Assessment: This activity can act as an assessment task where students are required to deliver a 3-minute oral presentation to the class on why the prisoner they profiled should or should not be entitled to early release. The class as a whole can provide peer review feedback to presenters indicating whether they were convinced by their arguments, and why. If this activity is used as an assessment task, it is strongly recommended that students be obliged to incorporate Trove newspaper research in their work. It is also suggested that they be required to draw upon scholarship about sentencing practices in justifying whether or not they deem the original sentence imposed upon the offender for the offence was appropriate. Students may benefit from consulting the extensive list of thematically-organised readings about the history of crime and criminal justice in Australia available on the Criminal Characters website here.
Resources
Offender Profile Worksheet: This handout can be used to capture information about the offender that forms the basis for student discussion as to whether they are suitable candidates for early release.
Guide to Criminal Characters Transcription: There are detailed instructions on the transcription process on the website itself, but this provides a quick overview for students to get started.
Sentencing Handout: This handout provides a brief overview of the historical development, objectives and types of criminal sentencing. It can be provided to students as a resource that can guide their discussion of relevant factors to consider in relation to early release.
Guide to Trove Newspaper Searching: Advice to students about the best way to search for newspaper articles related to offenders.
Readings
Chan, Janet B L. “Decarceration and Imprisonment in New South Wales: A Historical Analysis of Early Release.” UNSW Law Journal 13, no. 2 (1990): 393-416.
Douglas, Heather and Jennifer Corrin. “‘A Tragedy of Monumental Proportions’: Indigenous Australians and the Sentencing Process.” Social & Legal Studies 19, no. 2 (2010): 197-215.
Finnane, Mark. Punishment in Australian Society. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Second ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
Fox, Richard G. “The Meaning of Proportionality in Sentencing.” Melbourne University Law Review 19, no. 3 (1994): 489-511.
Henshaw, Max, Lorana Bartels and Anthony Hopkins. “Set Up to Fail?: Examining Australian Parole Compliance Laws through a Therapeutic Jurisprudence Lens.” University of Western Australia Law Review 45, no. 1 (2019): 107-136.
Kornhauser, Ryan and Kathy Laster. “Punitiveness in Australia: Electronic Monitoring vs The Prison.” Crime, Law and Social Change 62, no. 4 (2014): 445-474.
Smith, Evan. “Modern Diversion or Colonial Hangover? The History and Development of Suspended Sentences in South Australia.” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 49, no. 2 (2016): 240-257.