{"product_id":"2026200016296-secondhand-alexander-maconochie-of-norfolk-island","title":"Alexander Maconochie Of Norfolk Island","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdition: First Edition Thus\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage\u003cbr\u003ePages: Tanning and foxing\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Some minor silverfish damage to FEP, rubbed edges and some chipping to DJ.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the brutal world of nineteenth-century convict transportation, one man dared to imagine that prisoners were human beings worthy of dignity and reform — and paid dearly for it. Alexander Maconochie of Norfolk Island chronicles the remarkable life of Captain Alexander Maconochie, a Scottish naval officer and pioneering prison reformer who, in 1840, became superintendent of the notorious British penal colony on Norfolk Island, a place synonymous with savage punishment and despair. Driven by radical humanitarian convictions, Maconochie dismantled the system of arbitrary floggings and indefinite sentences, replacing them with his revolutionary mark system — a merit-based scheme that rewarded good behaviour with earned freedom — only to be dismissed by colonial authorities who viewed compassion as a dangerous weakness.\n\nJohn Vincent Barry, himself a distinguished Australian judge and legal scholar, brings both rigorous historical authority and profound moral insight to this biography, situating Maconochie's struggle within the broader arc of penal reform and the slow, painful evolution of Western justice. Barry illustrates how Maconochie's ideas — radical and ridiculed in his own time — planted the seeds for modern concepts of parole and rehabilitative justice that the world would only embrace a century later. This is a story of institutional cruelty, visionary courage, and the terrible cost of being right too soon — and it leaves the reader asking how many such visionaries we have silenced in the name of order.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49336815648987,"sku":"2026200016296-SECONDHAND","price":50.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/bd522220-e318-4eb6-809b-c1ca06c76bfd.png?v=1789958666","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200016296-secondhand-alexander-maconochie-of-norfolk-island","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}