Panopticon Australia

[Yazmín Bohon]

thepanopticon series travelled throughout australia and europe with members of the public shrouded in our privacy cocoon and navigated to a destination of their choice. journeys included catching a ferry, going to a bar, posting a letter, visiting an art gallery and buying a pair of shoes.

journeys were often painstakingly slow with activities that usually take 5 mins taking the team up to two hours to complete as they navigate traffic, uneven road surfaces, public transport systems and security officials.

Holloway, D. (2017). The panopticon kitchen: the materiality of parental surveillance in the family home. In Refereed Proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association Conference 2017 - Communication Worlds: Access, Voice, Diversity, Engagement.

The panopticon is a prison design comprised of a central observation tower which is surrounded by a circular building containing multiple levels of single inmate cells around the circumference. From the tower, a prison guard is able to observe each of the inmates in their cells.

The English philosopher and political radical Jeremy Bentham came up with the concept of the panopticon. The initial idea came to him in 1785 after he paid a visit to his brother, Samuel, in Russia. Samuel was using the central observation method to train and supervise unskilled workers.

Built in 1926, the Presidio Modelo consisted of five circular buildings with cells lining the walls of the structures, and a central observation tower within each. The correctional facility that held 6,000 inmates was controlled by minimal staff.

For Foucault, the possibility of being under the constant watch of the prison guard, along with the internalisation of this surveillance within the mind of the prisoner, is a metaphor for how power relations and social coercion operate in the modern world.

However, the most overt form of thought control in modern society is the use of CCTV. These cameras are perched in full view on the corners of buildings, threatening to capture people who are breaking law, but at the same time acting as a deterrent.

Individuals in the vicinity of cameras are constantly reminded that they are under the surveillance of someone in authority. They quickly learn to monitor and regulate their own behaviour, whether or not they are able to detect a camera.

The site forms part of the Australian Convict Sites, a World Heritage property consisting of 11 remnant penal sites originally built within the British Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries on fertile Australian coastal strips. Collectively, these sites, including Port Arthur, are described by UNESCO as "... the best surviving examples of large-scale convict transportation and the colonial expansion of European powers through the presence and labour of convicts."[3]

From 1833 until 1877, Port Arthur was the destination for those deemed the most hardened of convicted British criminals, those who were secondary offenders having reoffended after their arrival in Australia. Rebellious personalities from other convict stations were also sent there. In addition, Port Arthur had some of the strictest security measures of the British penal system.

Port Arthur was one example of the "Separate Prison Typology" (sometimes known as the model prison), which emerged from Jeremy Bentham's theories and his panopticon.[4] The prison was completed in 1853, but then extended in 1855. The layout of the prison was fairly symmetrical. It was a cross shape with exercise yards at each corner. The prisoner wings were each connected to the surveillance core of the prison, as well as the chapel in the centre hall.[5] From this surveillance hub, each wing could be clearly seen, although individual cells could not. This is how the Separate Prison at Port Arthur differed from the original theory of the panopticon.[4]

The Separate Prison System also signaled a shift from physical punishment to psychological punishment. The hard corporal punishment, such as whippings, used in other penal stations was thought to only serve to harden criminals, and did nothing to turn them from their immoral ways. For example, food was used to reward well-behaved prisoners and as punishment for troublemakers. As a reward, a prisoner could receive larger amounts of food or even luxury items such as tea, sugar, and tobacco. As punishment, the prisoners would receive the bare minimum of bread and water.[6] Under this system of punishment, the "Silent System" was implemented in the building. Here, prisoners were hooded and made to stay silent; this was supposed to allow time for the prisoner to reflect upon the actions which had brought him there. Many of the prisoners in the Separate Prison developed mental illness from the lack of light and sound. This was an unintended outcome, although the asylum was built right next to the Separate Prison. In many ways, Port Arthur was the model for many of the penal reform movements, despite the shipping, housing, and slave-labour use of convicts being as harsh, or worse, than other stations around the nation.

Port Arthur was also the destination for juvenile convicts, receiving many boys, some as young as nine. The boys were separated from the main convict population and kept on Point Puer, the British Empire's second boys' prison.[7] Like the adults, the boys were used in hard labour such as stone cutting and construction. One of the buildings constructed was one of Australia's first nondenominational churches, built in a gothic style. Attendance of the weekly Sunday service was compulsory for the prison population. Critics of the new system noted that this and other measures seemed to have negligible impact on reformation.

The archaeology found in Port Arthur shows that people living there participated in the mundane, material necessities of life. Not only did the people living there help prepare food, but they also participated in recreational activities such as smoking and hunting.[8] Archaeological excavation of the Port Arthur workshops complex is overseen by the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (PAHSMA). These workshops, situated on the original waterfront since 1830, housed the trades-focussed activities undertaken at the penal station including shoemakers, blacksmiths, tailors, turners and wheelwrights.[9] A journal of the ongoing excavation and conservation work at Port Arthur is documented online by Dr Richard Tuffin.[10]

The peninsula on which Port Arthur is located is a naturally secure site by being surrounded by water (rumoured by the administration to be shark-infested). The 30-m-wide isthmus of Eaglehawk Neck that was the only connection to the mainland was fenced and guarded by soldiers, traps, and dogs.

Shore-based and ship-based whaling was banned in the area to prevent convicts trying to escape in the boats. Officers at Port Arthur sometimes set out in their own boats and attempted to catch whales. This may have been more for sport than as a commercial activity.[14]

Contact between visiting seamen and prisoners was barred. Ships had to check in their sails and oars upon landing to prevent any escapes. However, many attempts were made, and some were successful. Boats were seized and rowed or sailed long distances to freedom.

Port Arthur was the birthplace of rail transport in Australia. In 1836, a tramway was established between Taranna and a jetty in Long Bay, north of Port Arthur. The sole propulsion was convicts.[17] One of the last remaining sections of the tramway can be viewed at the Federation Chocolate Factory at Taranna.

Port Arthur was sold as an inescapable prison, much like the later Alcatraz Island in the United States. Some prisoners were not discouraged by this, and tried to escape. Martin Cash successfully escaped along with two others.

Despite its reputation as a pioneering institution for the new, enlightened view of imprisonment, Port Arthur was still in reality as harsh and brutal as other penal settlements. Some critics might even suggest that its use of psychological punishment, compounded with no hope of escape, made it one of the worst. Some tales suggest that prisoners committed murder (an offence punishable by death) just to escape the desolation of life at the camp. The Isle of the Dead was the destination for all who died inside the prison camps. Of the 1,646 graves recorded to exist there, only 180, those of prison staff and military personnel, are marked. The prison closed in 1877.

Before Port Arthur was abandoned as a prison in 1877, some people saw the potential tourist attraction. David Burn, who visited the prison in 1842, was awed by the peninsula's beauty and believed that many would come to visit it.[18] This opinion was not shared by all. For example, Anthony Trollope in 1872 declared that no man desired to see the "strange ruins" of Port Arthur.[18]

After the prison closed, much of the property was put up for auction. However, most of the property was not sold until 1889.[18] By this time, the area had become increasingly popular and the prison buildings were in decay. As the Hobart Mercury proclaimed, "the buildings themselves are fast going to decay, and in a few years will attract nobody; for they will be ruins without anything to make them worthy of respect, or even remembrance.[18]" The Model Prison was purchased by Anglican church minister and politician Joseph Woollnough, who operated tours and donated the proceeds to the church.[19][20]

The decay was seen as something positive, as the Tasmanian population wished to distance themselves from the dark image of Port Arthur. Those who bought Port Arthur property began tearing down the buildings,[18] the destruction was furthered by the fires of 1895 and 1897, which destroyed the old prison house, and earth tremors.[18] In place of the Prison Port Arthur, the town of Carnarvon was born. The town was named after the British Secretary of State and the population was said to be "refined and intellectual".[18] The town brought in many visitors as they encouraged boating, fishing, and shooting in the natural beauty of the peninsula. They again wished to remove the negative connotation attached to the area.[18]

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