Bwb Texts

BWB Texts

'I think ... I am going to die.'

‘When Miss Katherine Mansfield, the brilliant novelist, passed away the other day in almost the spring of her promise, it was in a curious little oasis in the historic Forest of Fontainebleau . . .’ From 'The Graphic', 10 March 1923 This moving, beautifully written chapter from Kathleen Jones’s biography 'Katherine Mansfield, The Story-teller' (2010), describes Mansfield’s last days and death at a chateau near Paris, the centre of a spiritual movement led by the mysterious Russian philosopher-mystic Georges Gurdjieff. BWB Texts offer a new form of reading for New Zealanders. Commissioned as short digital-only works, BWB Texts unlock diverse stories, insights and analysis from the best of our past, present and future New Zealand writing.

A Punitive Society

‘New Zealand has one of the highest levels of imprisonment in the Western world. Yet the growth of imprisonment in New Zealand has occurred when the crime rate here, as in most other Western societies, has been in significant decline. Why, then, the disjuncture?’ In this penetrating BWB Text, John Pratt describes the dramatic transformation in penal thought that has recently taken place in this country. Rising imprisonment in New Zealand, against the background of a falling crime rate, is connected with changes in how we, as a society, think about the purpose and function of punishment. This growth of ‘penal populism’, Pratt asserts, has caused enormous and lasting damage to New Zealand’s social fabric.