18 Jun WHAT WOULD A POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVE ON CRI
WHAT WOULD A POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVE ON CRIMINOLOGY LOOK LIKE?
September 20, 2018Posted by: kajo No Comments
What would a postcolonial perspective on criminology look like? At the outset, I would emphasize that a postcolonial perspective for criminology can provide both theoretical insights and grounded policy analysis. A postcolonial perspective in criminology does not need to eschew evaluative approaches or empirical research but it should proceed from a critical and reflexive framework that questions the centrality of a western understanding of crime and control. A postcolonial vision for criminology can engage with public policy formulation and debates, but it does so from a theoretical grounding that recognizes the importance of history, particularly through understanding of the long-term impact of colonization and imperialism, and it does so through an analysis of the structures of sentiment and ideology that determine the intersections of race, crime, and punishment. A postcolonial perspective suggests a number of issues and conceptual standpoints. I do not lay claim in this essay to be any more than suggestive of some possible avenues for exploration.
Human Rights and State Crime
Broadly speaking, a postcolonial perspective opens up criminology to a more intellectually robust understanding of human rights and state crime. It also provides an opportunity to question the historical foundations of criminology as part of the imperialist project (Morrison 2006). I want to explore the potential relationship between state crime and human rights through reference to indigenous peoples in colonial settler societies. As I explore further below, indigenous people have been victims of profound historical injustices and abuses of human rights over the last several centuries that can be at least partially understood in the context of state crime—the modern political state developed through the systematic abuse of peoples who are now minorities within developed states. Furthermore, contemporary criminal justice systems within those states are often seen as disregarding or undermining respect for indigenous people’s human rights. A postcolonial perspective also allows us to understand how contemporary indigenous claims to human rights protections can impact on current criminal justice processes, and how those claims might broaden our understanding of reform and change within the criminal justice system.
Historical Injustices and Human Rights Abuses
We know the widespread role of state institutions, often sanctioned by law, as the perpetrators of some of the greatest crimes against humanity. Modern political states have been responsible for the murder of millions of people even when deaths in wars, judicial executions, etc. are excluded (Green and Ward 2004: 1). The modern political state has been integral to the commission of genocide and other human rights abuses. Genocide and modernity have gone hand in hand (Bauman 1989), and the specific modernity of genocide is that the vastness and totality of ‘final solutions’ could only (p.253) be pursued by the modern state with access to resources, administrative capacities and lawmaking functions (Gellately and Kiernan 2003: 4). This is at the heart of our contemporary understanding of state crime. That genocide, the ‘crime of all crimes’, should have been absent from criminology for so long deserves full explanation in itself (Morrison 2004). A part of the problem has been the positivist approaches in law and criminology that define ‘crime’ as a breach of state criminal law, and count crimes from the data driven by state agencies. Within such state-centric discourses it is difficult to conceptualize the incidence and nature of state crime.
A postcolonial perspective broadens our understanding of state crime because it draws attention to the connections between the colonial development of the modern political state and the globalized nature of gross violations of human rights of indigenous and former colonized peoples. In other words, the modern political state is built on the human rights abuses of colonized and enslaved peoples. Indeed racism, slavery and its consequent effects in Africa and America could be the subject of much criminological research. If we turn our attention specifically to the claims concerning historical injustices and human rights abuses against indigenous peoples we find that there are multiple layers of state crime. At the highest level is the claim that particular colonial practices against indigenous people constituted genocide. Below genocide are claims of mass murder, racism, ethnocide (or cultural genocide), slavery, forced labour, forced removals and relocations, the denial of property rights, and the denial of civil and political rights (Cunneen 2007).
In many cases claims for reparations and remedies for these abuses dominate political relations among indigenous peoples and the state in countries like Canada and Australia. A postcolonial perspective places contemporary demands for reparations and compensation for historical injustices as a legitimate subject area for criminology. If we see these systematic abuses as a form of crime then demands for redress are not simply questions of law and politics, they are also questions with which criminology might fruitfully engage. Such an engagement might involve documenting and understanding the way state agencies were involved in various practices (such as mass murder), or analysing the techniques through which states deny culpability (Cohen 2001), or developing conceptual frameworks and analysis of how processes for reparations might work—particularly given criminology’s interests in punishment, offender-victim relations, and restorative justice.
Human Rights Abuses and the Contemporary Relations between Indigenous Peoples and Criminal Justice Systems
Contemporary indigenous peoples are found across many nations and total some 370 million people. As distinct peoples they have retained social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics that distinguish them from the dominant societies in which they live. Indigenous peoples are also among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups of people in the world (Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2006). (p.254) The experiences of colonization varied depending on when it occurred, where and by whom. However there are commonalities found in indigenous peoples’ relations with dominant criminal justice systems in former colonial settler societies both in the English-speaking societies of north America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the former settler colonies of central and south America. A common factor relevant to criminology is the massive over-representation of indigenous peoples in state criminal justice systems. Generally the data (where available) shows that indigenous people are more likely to be apprehended by police, more likely to be prosecuted, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to be sentenced to imprisonment (see Cunneen 2007: 247–8 for a summary). There have been major inquiries into the relationship of indigenous people with the criminal justice system, particularly in Australia (the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody) and Canada (the Manitoba Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Peoples).
A postcolonial perspective in criminology approaches the question of racial and minority over-representation from a position grounded in the experiences of colonized peoples. Those experiences tend to see over-representation not as a matter of crime and punishment per se, but rather as an extension of dispossession and the abuse of human rights. A postcolonial perspective forces criminology to leave the relatively comfortable zone of positivist definitions of crime and to consider how marginalized peoples may view criminal justice intervention as unjust. Western liberal democratic states define their criminal justice systems as neutral, fair and universal in their application, indeed their legitimacy demands that these principles be upheld. Yet it is clear that many indigenous peoples see state criminal justice systems as oppressive. In general positivist approaches in criminology assume the legitimacy of the criminal justice system and seek to answer questions relating to frequency and causes of crime and the efficacy of criminal justice responses. A postcolonial perspective starts by questioning these assumptions and analysing how criminal justice systems can have the effect of entrenching the marginalization of minority peoples.
Collective Rights and Criminal Justice Systems
The process of reasserting indigenous collective rights, such as recognition of indigenous law and governance, self-determination, or self-government, may require significant institutional change on the part of state criminal justice agencies. Given that a central component of the indigenous critique of policing and the criminal justice system has been that indigenous rights have been ignored, it would be naive to think that the political demands of indigenous peoples would not also require substantial institutional reform. Henriksen (1998: 32) has discussed four existing ways of arranging indigenous autonomy and self-government, including:
• indigenous autonomy through contemporary indigenous political institutions (for example, Saami parliaments in the Nordic countries); (p.255)
• indigenous autonomy based on the concept of an indigenous territorial base (for example, the Comarca arrangement in Panama, the Torres Strait Regional Authority in Australia, or Native American jurisdictions in the United States);
• regional autonomy within the state (for example, the Nunavut territory in Canada or indigenous autonomous regions in the Philippines);
• indigenous overseas autonomy (for example, Greenland home rule).
I simply make the point that political claims to self-determination have significant implications for state-based criminal justice systems. Rather than seeing these claims as a problem—as existing states and their institutions tend to do—a postcolonial perspective for criminology can envision the potential fragmentation of centralized criminal justice systems as an opportunity for responsive change and greater community-driven development.
Our website has a team of professional writers who can help you write any of your homework. They will write your papers from scratch. We also have a team of editors just to make sure all papers are of HIGH QUALITY & PLAGIARISM FREE. To make an Order you only need to click Ask A Question and we will direct you to our Order Page at WriteDemy. Then fill Our Order Form with all your assignment instructions. Select your deadline and pay for your paper. You will get it few hours before your set deadline.
Fill in all the assignment paper details that are required in the order form with the standard information being the page count, deadline, academic level and type of paper. It is advisable to have this information at hand so that you can quickly fill in the necessary information needed in the form for the essay writer to be immediately assigned to your writing project. Make payment for the custom essay order to enable us to assign a suitable writer to your order. Payments are made through Paypal on a secured billing page. Finally, sit back and relax.
About Writedemy
We are a professional paper writing website. If you have searched a question and bumped into our website just know you are in the right place to get help in your coursework. We offer HIGH QUALITY & PLAGIARISM FREE Papers.
How It Works
To make an Order you only need to click on “Order Now” and we will direct you to our Order Page. Fill Our Order Form with all your assignment instructions. Select your deadline and pay for your paper. You will get it few hours before your set deadline.
Are there Discounts?
All new clients are eligible for 20% off in their first Order. Our payment method is safe and secure.