Punishment, Welfare and Gender Ordering in Queensland, 1920–1940

Abstract

This study investigates the relationships between penality (or official approaches to punishment) and welfare thinking that emerged in Queensland in the interwar years. Penality came to focus upon concerns about gender ordering and, in particular, those conceptions of “familied” masculinity and femininity which (supposedly) enhanced human wellbeing and social stability during a time of economic and social distress. Yet while state punishment selectively sanctioned and worked towards reinforcing particular masculine and feminine constructs, the “correctional” outcomes for various categories of male and female offenders in terms of their lived experiences were very different: determined not only by gender but also along lines of age and family arrangements. Three major strands of penal philosophy — the domestic, work ethic and medical approaches — coexisted between the wars and their overlap, seen perhaps more clearly in the case of women, compounded the gendered nature of ‘penality as welfare’. Attention to specific regimes in the social history of punishment reminds us of the need to appreciate the often complex interplay between systems of punishment and welfare.