New resource traces lives of British convicts transported to Australia

Family historians, teachers, crime writers and academics can now follow the lives of people convicted and transported to Australia or imprisoned in Britain using a vast, free online resource, the Digital Panopticon website. The new website draws on over four million records to allow users to uncover how punishment affected the lives of 90,000 individuals convicted of crimes at the Old Bailey between 1780 and 1925, including those uprooted by the UK criminal justice system to carry out their sentence in the British Empire's then newly established penal colonies in Australia. By providing a wide range of search fields, including name, year and place of birth, criminal record, height, eye and hair colour, among others, it is possible to compare the impact of transportation and imprisonment on reoffending, family life and health. The free website also allows users to search by group, such as those convicted of a certain crime, and then download entire data sets for analysis. Researchers, including Professor Deborah Oxley of Oxford University's Faculty of History, have discovered that: Many convicts did not serve the punishments as originally laid out, including many sentenced to transportation who never left Britain British convicts that were transported to Australia tended to desist from offending once married with children. Children born to transported convicts were healthier and taller than those born to convicts imprisoned in Britain. A dramatic increase in record-keeping during the 19th century became a new form of state control over the criminal.