Abstract
Between 2020 and 2022, University of Tasmania criminology students and University of Newcastle history students completed an exercise in primary source transcription and self-reflection which allowed them to actively participate in generating valuable data for criminological and historical inquiries. The transcriptions were taken from handwritten prisoner records held by the Public Records Office of Victoria. Without the work of these students and a host of volunteers, valuable data about the life histories and criminal career trajectories of offenders would remain inaccessible, and potentially be lost over time. The students were enabled to interact with individuals’ criminal records and to interrogate these encounters with the legal system in ways that cannot be undertaken with contemporary data due to legal and privacy restrictions. Through reflection on the relationship between criminology and history, this chapter demonstrates how citizen social science projects like this one can be used as a tool both to engage student learners and to extend the impact of Public Criminology.
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Appendix 1 Offender Profile Worksheet
Appendix 1 Offender Profile Worksheet
Name(s) | |
|---|---|
Height | |
Complexion | |
Hair colour | |
Eye colour | |
Date of birth | |
Place of birth | |
Trade | |
Religion | |
Literacy | |
Marital status | |
Date of first conviction | |
Date of last conviction | |
Number of convictions | |
Description of offence(s) | |
Place(s) convicted | |
Number of prison infractions | |
Description of prison infractions | |
Other information |
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Nagy, V., Cushing, N., Piper, A. (2023). Public Criminology in the Australian Higher Education Classroom: Bringing Criminology and History Together Through Citizen Social Science. In: Jones, D., Jones, M., Strudwick, K., Charles, A. (eds) Public Criminology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42167-9_8
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