Overview

In 1840, Alexander Maconochie, a privileged retired naval captain, became at his own request superintendent of two thousand twice-convicted prisoners on Norfolk Island, a thousand miles off the coast of Australia. In four years, Maconochie transformed what was one of the most brutal convict settlements in history into a controlled, stable, and productive environment that achieved such success that upon release his prisoners came to be called ""Maconochie's Gentlemen"". Here Norval Morris, one of our most renowned criminologists, offers a highly inventive and engaging account of this early pioneer in penal reform, enhancing Maconochie's life story with a trenchant policy twist. Maconochie's life and efforts on Norfolk Island, Morris shows, provide a model with profound relevance to the running of correctional institutions today. Using a unique combination of fictionalized history and critical commentary, Morris gives this work a powerful policy impact lacking in most standard academic accounts. In an era of ""mass incarceration"" that rivals that of the settlement of Australia, Morris injects the question of humane treatment back into the debate over prison reform. Maconochie and his ""Marks system"" played an influential role in the development of prisons; but for the last thirty years prison reform has been dominated by punitive and retributive sentiments, the conventional wisdom holding that we need 'supermax' prisons to control the 'worst of the worst' in solitary and harsh conditions. Norval Morris argues to the contrary, holding up the example of Alexander Maconochie as a clear-cut alternative to the ""living hell"" of prison systems today.

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9780195169126

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Reviews

Readers could not ask for a better guide to this island of exiles and birthplace of prison reform. A widely published criminologist and respected academic, Morris understands the inner workings of prisons and shares with his principal characters the belief 'that punishment, allowing room for and facilitating redemption, dignifies society, makes prison service a constructive occupation and enhances public safety. --Jennifer Wynn, Washington Post<br> If Maconochie's methods worked under such extreme conditions, wouldn't they work today in our supposedly enlightened times? Highly recommended for crime collections in public and academic libraries. --Library Journal (starred review)<br> This lucid, novel (and novelistic) approach to a nearly forgotten chapter in penology deserves attention. --Publishers Weekly<br> Captain Maconochie's Gentlemen displays Norval Morris's large gifts as a fine narrative writer and a pre-eminent social scientist. This is a book that fits Aristotle's directive that fine art should enlighten and entertain. It is, in the first instance, an illuminating story, told through the eyes of Captain Maconochie and the family and colleagues he brought with him to Norfolk Island in 1840, of Western society's first efforts at penal rehabilitation. The fiction is followed by incisive reflections by Morris in his role as one of America's leading criminologists, relating Maconochie's experiment to the circumstances today. The book is engrossing in both modes and is thoughtful, moving, and revealing at all points. My hat is off to Norval Morris. --Scott F. Turow<br> Morris blends fact with fiction o provide us with a compelling story-- seen through the eyes ofMaconochie, members of his family, assigned personnel, and convicts-- of the conditions on this penal colony and his efforts to develop a rational and humane system of rewards and punishment... Maconochie's Gentlemen is an interesting and thought provoking book on correctional policy and practice, in which the lessons are drawn from a historical perspective. Norval Morris has made yet another significant contribution to correctional scholarship. --Crime & Justice International<br>

Author Information

Norval Morris is Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Criminology at the University of Chicago. He is the editor of The Oxford History of the Prison and the author of The Brothel Boy and Other Parables of the Law. In 2000, he received both the American Society of Criminology's Edwin E. Sutherland Award and the National Council of Crime and Delinquency's Donald Cressey Award.

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