The road to Lotus Glen: Aborigines, the law, justice and imprisonment in colonial Queensland
Genever, Terence Geoffrey (1996) The road to Lotus Glen: Aborigines, the law, justice and imprisonment in colonial Queensland. PhD thesis, James Cook University of North Queensland.
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Abstract
This thesis examines aspects of the laws that were applied to Aborigines during Queensland's colonial era. It looks at the effect of imposing an alien judicial system on people who did not understand it but nonetheless recognised its inequity. It argues that the criminal justice system that was applied to black people had specific aims that were quite separate from those directed at Europeans. For Aborigines this law employed the thinking of a bygone draconian age, but did so in an epoch when white offenders were being subjected to a system that was marked by legal benignity. Therefore during this period a dual system was operating. To substantiate its argument, the work looks at the white response to crimes by Aborigines and in doing so it seeks to analyse the effects of an outmoded and imposed legal strategy that was manipulated to further the aims of colonialism at the expense of justice. This, allied to white racial attitudes and European constructions of Aboriginality, provides a starting point from which to consider a situation where black representation in Queensland's prisons grew from nil to over 50% in some gaols. It is a thesis on a failed system which is at least partially responsible for Australian Aborigines currently being counted as the world's most frequently imprisoned people.
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