The Digital Panopticon: The Global Impact of London Punishments, 1780-1925

Led by an international team of established researchers, this ambitious large-scale project develops new and transferable methodologies for understanding and exploiting complex bodies of genealogical, biometric, and criminal justice data, thereby demonstrating the benefits of digital innovation to sometimes skeptical scholars and public audiences. Through data mapping and life-course analysis this project will investigate a central issue of penology and social policy: the relative impacts of different types of punishment on criminal desistance, health outcomes, employment opportunities, and family life over the long term. Using sophisticated data-linking methodologies it joins together existing and widely used large data-sets (Old Bailey Online [containing accounts of all trials held at London's Central Criminal Court]; London Lives [a searchable archive of crime, poverty and social policy]; and Founders and Survivors [records of the 73,000 men women and children who were transported to Tasmania]) with newly digitised data to make it possible to chart the fortunes of all Londoners convicted at the Old Bailey between the departure of the First Fleet to Australia (1787) through to the death of the last transported Londoner in Australia in the early 1920s. Prisoners kept in London's burgeoning prison estate will be identified and followed in newly available digitized prison records, as well as civil datasets (such as the censuses carried out between 1841 and 1911). Convicts sentenced to transportation will be traced through the richly detailed convict records in Australia, as well as in London prison registers and birth, marriage and death records. We will trace the criminal London poor through a plethora of digital records, recreating a pan-global prism capable of mapping and analyzing their lives at both the collective and individual level.

The main output will be a database and curated-website, in addition to publications in leading journals. At the outset we will publish a blog, and a project website (which will explain our methodology and progress, introduce debates on ethics, methodology, and epistemology, and provide preliminary findings, so that we can engage with the widest possible audience). The 'London Eye' website will also provide an integrated search engine for searching the conjoined datasets containing life course data for 66,000 Londoners who experienced differing penal regimes, which we expect to be regularly consulted by many of the 12 million family historians in the UK and Australia. In addition, in partnership with media and industry partners, we will create online digital learning resources that will disseminate project findings to family historians, schools, and the creative industries.

This project reconstructs the story of family formation, desistence and reoffending on a vast and unprecedented scale. In constructing this digital Panopticon of London criminal justice, this interdisciplinary trans-national project will resolve a number of important questions which have long intrigued historians, sociologists, social geographers, linguistic researchers, economists and criminologists, who have hitherto lacked the tools to carry out this research.

An integral part of the project involves engaging non-academic beneficiaries in the use of our data and research findings. The research will contribute to public and policy debates on desistance, penal regimes, and sentencing policy/practice. Our long term aspiration is to bring to a wider audience research on the impact of imprisonment and transportation on the offenders (across the whole of their lives) and their families and communities. The main non-academic beneficiaries of the project are family and local historians, the cultural sector, the heritage industry, schools, and policy makers. In the first month, we will agree an Impact Plan with the steering group and Industry Partners Group. From the start, we will engage with all potential users through the project blog and website and will stimulate debates which connect academic research to public audiences, as well as encourage and enhance the public use of digital online resources. The economic impact amongst family historians will include driving new subscribers to Ancestry (a model for how humanities research can engage with commercially-driven content providers). We will engage with family historians though contributions to family history magazines, public lectures, and the London Eye. We expect the website to be consulted, like the Old Bailey Online and Founders and Survivors, by many of the 12 million family historians in the UK/Australia, and we hope to harness the power of the community of family historians for crowd-sourcing. Genealogists researching the site will not only learn about their own family histories but also become aware of the wider history of punishment in their regions, thereby enhancing their quality of life. The research team have on-going relationships/connections with the media and we will seek to reach a larger audience and create more impact for our work by disseminating our findings on radio and television programmes, thereby contributing to the quality of cultural life and the economic health of the cultural sector. Our work with the heritage industry will have similar benefits. As reflected in our research theme on 'Digital Dark Tourism', our investigations into the ethics of the opening up of former sites of pain and punishment for personal pleasure involves issues of considerable interest to that industry. Working with our Industry Partnership Group (comprised of representatives of The National Archives, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office, ROAR Film, and the London Metropolitan Archives), we aim to develop best practice within this rapidly-expanding sector of the British and Australian heritage industry. Beyond these partners, gaol, police, and court museums will benefit from our advice (informal and in briefing papers) and we will present at industry-organized seminars. We will also take the digital archive into UK/Australian schools. Our student-centred approach will allow learners of all levels to navigate their own digital learning experience. Through our contacts with NGOs (including the Magistrates' Association, Howard League for Penal Reform, Transform Justice, and Prison Reform Trust) and policy makers, and by the dissemination of briefing papers, the project will increase the effectiveness of public services and policy through the provision of a new and innovative perspective on the longer term impacts of imprisonment. Repeat offenders who serve short prison sentences and quickly re-offend upon release cost the UK economy billions of pounds. The historical perspective provided by this project, and the ability the project has to analyze the impact of different prison and penal regimes on the whole lifetime of offenders can influence policy/public debates. The data will assist the third sector/media to make arguments to policy makers about the efficacy of prisons policy, and to greater engage the public in debates armed with reliable longitudinal digital data.