'Envisioning the Colonial Prison'

The modern prison is a paradox, presenting a recurrent tension between the seen and the unseen. In taking punishment away from the public gaze and confining prisoners behind high walls and in fortress-like buildings, the designers of the modern prison attached paramount importance to the need for seclusion. For the sake of punishment and reform they sought to cut prisoners off from the pleasures, rewards and consolations of the outside world and to make their invisibility and inaccessibility to relatives and friends a source of fear and deterrence. By sending prisoners to distant locations, by transporting them to penal settlements and colonies overseas, or by transferring them to even remoter outposts, the abstraction and seclusion of prisoners was made, in theory at least, even more complete. [Taken from introduction]