Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 August 7

= August 7 =

Which historical countries have had the highest relative prisoner population?
I know that the "land of the free" has the highest relative and absolute prisoner population in the world. However, I'd like to understand if it's a new development for other countries to release their prisoners, or if they didn't have as many as in the USA to begin with. Specifically, I know that 17th-19th century Britain had a need for penal colonies and both Russia and the USSR sent much of their undesirable population to Siberia. How do such countries compare to the US today? What were common historical incarceration rates and which were the highest known in history? — Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 16:45, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This again. Look, a country such as North Korea, where citizens are not allowed to leave, are de facto prisons. The entire population is effectively incarcerated. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:59, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Prison has existed since Roman times as a means of punishment for crimes, but it has not been the primary means of such punishment. Housing prisoners was primarily about detaining them prior to a trial or punishment.  Once a sentence was carried out, which was often some form of torture (beating, mutilation, humiliation) or fine (which was often paid by some form of indentured servitude), a person was released back to live their lives.  By the colonial period, penal transportation became a common way to punish people.  The idea that the primary penalty for crimes would be to lock people in cells for a set term is relatively recent, probably not until the 19th century that such a usage became the standard.  The Wikipedia article titled Prison goes into some of this, and has several good explicit references, such as Discipline and Punish, which I've not read, but looks like it is a good read for someone researching this area.  -- Jayron 32 17:09, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Transportation in Britain was only a more humane alternative to the Bloody Code, a system which allowed the death penalty for the most trivial offences, such as pickpocketing goods worth a shilling (5 new pence or the equivalent of about £30 today), cutting down a tree without permission or "spoiling a fish pond". The height of this system was the Black Act 1723, ostensibly against thieves who blackened their faces to avoid recognition. Hanging everyone kept a regular throughput in the prison system. Alansplodge (talk) 19:18, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Did anyone ever commit a minor crime just to get a free trip to Australia? There's lots of cons (like joining cons) but the going rate for going to America for free was 7 years as an indentured servant so there's probably a few. How many old pence did a trip to Australia cost? (were there any tourists? Not being transportated, just there to say they've been on every* continent or for the novelty of seeing a continent where they just drop off non-capital crims and say do what you want, you can't swim back so don't bother. The back is interesting to see too, probably no convicts but both the front and back of Australia should've been worthy of a spot on a bucket list of world travel buffs willing to rough it a bit, if only for no other reason than cause there's no way to see the back without crossing the front) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:18, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Don't know about early tourism to Australia, but following that lead and getting back to the original question, the First Fleet that brought British people there delivered 753 convicts and their children as part of a total initial population of 1030. That's around 73% prisoners. But there's a few provisos. This wasn't the country of Australia. It was the British Colony of New South Wales. Then there's the small issue that there were maybe a million people there already, whose ancestors had been there for maybe 70,000 years. HiLo48 (talk) 06:27, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The Second Fleet had a prisoner mortality rate of 40%, and the prisoners were kept in chains below deck for the whole voyage (between 158 and 306 days depending on the ship) and few of the survivors were able to walk when they arrived. So not much of a pleasure cruise. Alansplodge (talk) 16:57, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I always thought the sentence was just a weird way of saying exile, sounds like the real punishment actually was the transportation. Can't make too many moon a bobby or something to farm Australia I suppose, gotta keep those transportation costs down. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:01, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Exile and penal transportation are two different things. Exile is from somewhere, and transportation is to somewhere.  Exile is "We don't care where you go, just GTFO", while transportation was taking people to a specific place to enact a specific sentence.  -- Jayron 32 19:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, if you survived the journey, you still had to do hard labour until your sentence expired. The sunny weather in Australia isn't such a bonus if you have to break rocks all day. Alansplodge (talk) 20:18, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Not just breaking rocks. Sometimes building with them. And the results could be rewarding. HiLo48 (talk) 04:53, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * For anyone interested in this topic, I strongly recommend the book The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes, that goes into details about both the 18th century penal system in England, and the development of Australia as a vast penal colony. Xuxl (talk) 13:24, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And just in case anyone's wondering, having a convict ancestor is considered a badge of honour in Australia today. HiLo48 (talk) 22:36, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Some are later arriving at the party than others. When my late Mum first discovered we had a convict ancestor, it was revealed to the rest of the family on a strictly "for your ears only" basis, in case of "what people might think". This was as late as the early-mid 1990s. I remember it was after 1988, because our ancestor had a Bicentennial commemoration stone erected in his honour that year, something of which my family were completely unaware at the time. He served his time, then made a name for himself as a pioneer of the Mittagong district, south of Sydney. Despite this public recognition, we still had to keep our connection to him hush-hush until Mum learned how to mellow out. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  00:48, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

The penultimate line in Robert Ludlum's "The Holcroft Covenant"
What does it mean that the Tinamou was killed "by the Tinamou"? As far as any reader can tell Noel was NOT the Tinamou! And yet he is the one who killed the Tinamou at the end. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jassiken (talk • contribs) 21:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I proffer this only as a suggested interpretation, not a definitive one: others may also be argued. "The Tinamou" is a myth: no single person is the Tinamou, instead Projekt Sonnenkinder eliminates those it wants killed by feeding them false, confusing information until one of them comes to believes another of them is the Tinamou and kills them. Thus Noel Holcroft himself has, by killing someone the Projekt wanted dead, unwittingly functioned as the Tinamou. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.217.210.84 (talk) 08:01, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. The protagonist is confused throughout (and so is the reader). I wonder how the film dealt with this., or did it? --Lambiam 22:26, 11 August 2020 (UTC)