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A History of Capital Punishment in the Australian Colonies, 1788 to 1900Australia’s Hanging Years

A History of Capital Punishment in the Australian Colonies, 1788 to 1900: Australia’s Hanging Years [By triangulating the data from each jurisdiction about execution numbers, capital crimes and the implementation of mercy, a useful survey of capital punishment in Australia can be carried out. At every turn the death penalty was imprinted with the unique contingencies of settlement. We discover that approximately two thousand people were executed in Australia from 1788 to 1967 with a pronounced spike in the 1820s and 1830s. New South Wales inherited over two-hundred capital crimes from England but that number reduced to eleven by Federation. The steady reduction of capital crimes was replicated in all of the other colonies. When the death sentence was passed over a criminal the overall numbers indicate that they were actually more likely to be extended mercy than executed. Each of the six Australian colonies, once proclaimed, was administered separately. But, when it came to capital punishment, the similarities were more striking than the differences.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A History of Capital Punishment in the Australian Colonies, 1788 to 1900Australia’s Hanging Years

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020
ISBN
978-3-030-53766-1
Pages
19 –54
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-53767-8_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[By triangulating the data from each jurisdiction about execution numbers, capital crimes and the implementation of mercy, a useful survey of capital punishment in Australia can be carried out. At every turn the death penalty was imprinted with the unique contingencies of settlement. We discover that approximately two thousand people were executed in Australia from 1788 to 1967 with a pronounced spike in the 1820s and 1830s. New South Wales inherited over two-hundred capital crimes from England but that number reduced to eleven by Federation. The steady reduction of capital crimes was replicated in all of the other colonies. When the death sentence was passed over a criminal the overall numbers indicate that they were actually more likely to be extended mercy than executed. Each of the six Australian colonies, once proclaimed, was administered separately. But, when it came to capital punishment, the similarities were more striking than the differences.]

Published: Sep 3, 2020

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