Troubled Teen Industry Uses the Same Imprisonment Method as Early Australian Penal Colony
A Reflection on Chapter 1 and 2 of Joe vs Elan School — Rude Awakening and Running On Empty
I’ve recently finished reading Joe VS Elan School. It was a very impactful read.
I can’t really express all that I felt reading it in a single article. So instead I thought I’d go through the chapters one by one and write — not a review exactly — but something about the thoughts that they bring up, be they directly musing about the what happened that chapter, or some tangent thought that I had reading it and the rabbit hole that thought sent me down.
While reading chapter 1 Rude Awakening and 2 Running On Empty, I began thinking about how so many of these “schools” are located in remote areas where it’s impossible to run into town, to safety or even to anonymity. And how that’s one of the things that kept early Australian convicts from running away into the vast lands of Australia.
Australia: A Prison Without Walls
The vast, untamed bush and remote landscapes served as both prison walls and formidable adversaries for those incarcerated.
Penal colonies, such as those in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), were intentionally situated in remote locations. The vast distances and dense, unfamiliar…
