The year 1838 was a watershed moment in the administration of the Australian convict system. In this year the findings from the Report from the Select Committee on Transportation were released. Known as the Molesworth Report, it led to the complete reshaping of the trajectory of judicial punishment from Britain to the colonies. On the one hand, it removed the assignment system as a form of convict management. No longer would convicts face the ‘lottery’ of placement upon a free settler. Far more seismically, it resulted in the cessation of transportation to New South Wales from 1840. A new system was obviously required. Probation was the result.

Probation was obviously confined to the remaining colony of Van Diemen’s Land, as well as Norfolk Island (administered from Van Diemen’s Land from 1844). It was a system haphazardly assembled as both the colony and Britain struggled to cope with the massive influx of transports now arriving on the colony’s shores. It was underpinned by the aim of ensuring that all transportees would undergo a period of confinement upon arrival in the colony, before a staged release as labour for the free population. Whilst this did eventually take place, it was an ad hoc construct undermined by untimely economic downturns, settler hostility, poor resourcing and adversarial British governance.

Despite this, probation has gone on to shape the landscape of Tasmania in a multitude of ways. It’s an incredibly important part of our convict history and heritage. The StoryMap below tells this story, the result of a History Fellowship from the State Library of Tasmania.

Project participants
Richard Tuffin
Funded by State Library of Tasmania