The following text laid the foundation of a presentation I gave at Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, 2 November 2019, titled 'The Evangelism of Indigenous Criminology'
During a visit to New Zealand in June 2019 a friend of mine, a lecturer at an American University, told me he was 1 of 3 associate editors at an International publishing house that was considering a number of proposals for a series on criminology, one of which was the book - Indigenous Criminology - that Chris and I wrote. When considering the applications the two white criminologists questioned the need for 'another criminology like this one', and my friend responded by asking 'why not', partly in light of all the new criminologies that had been accepted into the club in recent years, including Peacemaking Criminology, Post-Colonial Criminology, Cultural Criminology, and the latest member, Criminology of the Global South (Southern Criminology).
At first glance, mentioning all these new criminology's appears to support the argument of the 2 Pakeha (European) criminologists, but my colleague continued by making the point that all these 'new criminologies' had largely evolved from the same space, influenced by the same epistemological milieu as all previous criminologies, namely from the space created by the white, privileged academic community. And we can say with certainty that apart from a few outliers, such as Chris Cunneen, Harry Blagg and Antje Deckert, that these criminology's had a lot to say about Indigenous peoples, about African American's and so forth, despite the fact that few of their adherents had lowered themselves to engage directly with us (with Cultural Criminology a notable exception), preferring instead to keep their distance and thus, their 'objectivity'. In other words, an Indigenous Criminology was necessary because of the lack of Indigenous input into the 'other criminologies' and the general reluctance of white criminologists to respectfully engage with us.
Thanks to the stance taken by my friend and colleague, the book Indigenous Criminology was published in 2016.
I submit that had the book proposal in question had been for 'a general theory of crime', or a 'post-modern criminology' and not one founded on Indigenous experiences, that the debate would have been very different, if indeed it would have occurred at all. At the very least the focus of discussion would have been very different; were the right authors and authorities present, did the perspective privilege white theorists and methodologies, that sort of thing. Of course, this is pure speculation on my part, but mainstream criminology, or perhaps more accurately whitestream criminology, has form in this regard, meaning a general disregard for the perspectives and experiences of Nga Morehu (the socially marginalised or unwanted), unless it is mediated and interpreted through their ideological and epistemological lens. Now, let me provide an example of what I mean when I say that mainstream criminology has 'form', by discussing the position of the English criminologist Pat Carlen on what makes for 'good criminology'.
In a chapter entitled Against Evangelism in Academic Criminology: For Criminology as a Scientific Art, Carlen rails against what she sees as the proliferation of boutique criminologies, approaches she describes as "those academy-based criminologies which have variously self-branded as 'critical', 'cultural', or 'public'", accusing them of "at times revealing evangelistic tendencies that pose a threat to their capacity for the open debate that each of them espouses". And what exactly are these so-called evangelistic tendencies Carlen speaks of? It appears that Carlen's main issue is that these criminologies suffer from twin allegiances, to 'academic criminology' and all that requires in terms of supplication to the alter of the white theoretical Gods and the supposed rationality of empiricism, and 'criminology politics', by which she means adherence to the more leftist tendencies in ordert to critique state-centred/sponsored criminological work, and taking a proactive stance to talk with and then on behalf of Nga Morehu. Their socio-political commitments, so Carlen alleges, need to be reined in, meaning that "the evangelistic strains in these boutique criminologies need to be confronted" if criminology as a scientific art is to continue to have any social significance.
Carlen refers to these approaches as evangelistic because of a tendency to expect members to adhere to an orthodoxy, a set of principles that demand adherents demonstrate commitment to an orthodoxy, as opposed to one based on the practice of empiricism. In fact, of these supposed evangelistic criminological strains, Carlen contends:
"They are the least desirable and potentially most self-damaging, aspects of the best of contemporary academic criminology".
As an Indigenous criminologist, nothing Carlen said about boutique criminologies is new. Her words mirror a common strain of
epistemological bias and snobbery often directed from whitestream criminology,
towards ‘other’ forms of knowledge, and in the settler-colonial context the
‘other’ is often Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous research. Which brings
me back to Don Weatherburn’s flippant dismissal of Indigenous knowledge and
experience, and therefore Indigenous scholarship, and that of our critical
non-Indigenous collaborators, such as Chris Cunneen. In stating that there is nothing to be learnt from us about what causes
crime, or how best or most effectively respond to it, Weatherburn is portraying
non-Western knowledge as ‘subjective’, as ‘unscientific’.
Where have we heard this type of comment before?
Isn't that exactly how our knowledge, our epistemologies have been represented since first contact?
According to Canadian scholars Proulx and Woolford, every colonial epoch produces projects designed to support the settler-colonial states subjugation of Indigenous peoples. Therefore, let's refer to them as colonial projects. Woolford for one imagines the process of colonisation and subsequent settler-colonial government, as a highly sophisticated mesh made up of inter-locking meta, meso and micro levels. Each level contains projects of varying complexity, interconnectedness and focus (meaning the specific role it plays in the colonial process, and therefore in the process of dispossession).
A whole series of inter-related projects were formulated across the mesh that were designed to extricate us from arable land, and to nullify our ability to impede the colonial enterprise. Key projects included Missionary, Research and/or Native schools, legislation banning our languages and specific cultural practices, such as the Tohunga Suppression Act in New Zealand. And then there were the nefarious colonial projects, such as the ideological destruction of the 'character' of Indigenous peoples, or what could be more accruately described as the 'Ideology of Race'. This was an important project for the establishment of colonial governance because it sought to discredit Indigenous language, knowledge, cultural practices and institutions. At the very heart of this project was the key ideological statement that underpinned so much of colonial policy, namely that 'Indigenous knowledge is folk-knowledge, based on myth and primitive religious belief and practice. Therefore, it is incomparable with western knowledge, which is derived from scientific inquiry and enlightenment thinking'.
Now, at the macro,
meso and micro levels we find key edifices that provide the superstructure upon
which settler-colonialism was built and continues to thrive today. Here we find a project of especial potency,
the criminal justice system, a ‘technology of oppression’ as Alison Young has described
it, and Agozino, “a control freak discipline”, one that is ably supported by
the academic discipline of criminology. The potency of this multi-level colonial project derives from the fact
that it is the conduit through which the settler-colonial state can
legitimately deploy violence against its citizens.
As a sub-component
of the law, criminal justice was, and
still is, a powerful (civilising) colonial project in two significant ways:
i) it ensures that the definitions of what constitutes crime and social
harm were based on Eurocentric understandings of those terms; and
ii) it provides a platform for the deployment of structural violence by
the state against Indigenous peoples considered not to have adhered to Western
standards of behaviour ala the ‘reasonable man of the law’, especially those
who happened to be residing on good pastoral land or atop mineral deposits, or
who dared directly challenge the hegemony of the colonial state, either through
armed rebellion, or non-violence resistance.
And what of
criminology? Social sciences like
criminology placed in the hands of the settler-colonial state the tools to
identify, name and (arguably) combat the moral sewage threatening to spill out
from the geographic space of the (Indigenous) damned. And one of the key ‘sciences of morality’ was
criminology, a discipline that’s conception, gestation and birth has been
traced through the colonial epoch. Furthermore, criminology, joined at birth to
the settler-colonial state, continues to thrive through a sustained focus on
the behaviours and attitudes that fuelled its conception – emotionality,
incontinence and contamination, and upon those sections of the community
considered by the settler-colonial state to be most threatening to social order,
the poor, the recalcitrant, and the Indigenous.
How different are
the views of Pat Carlen from those made by early
Missionaries, or colonial agents denigrating Indigenous knowledge? Although to be fair, Carlen was not directly
challenging the legitimacy of Indigenous Criminology, but nonetheless she
disparages any new forms of the discipline that do not adhere to the precepts of scientific
criminology, including objectivity and value neutrality. She intimates that the
political posturing of said criminologies is 'damaging to the brand' that is (in my view) best understood as corporatised criminology.
The Australian 'quantitative' social scientist, Don Weatherburn is a slightly different beast (or criminologist) than the Pat Carlen's of the white academy, appearing as he does - tiume and time again - less concerned with image politics and more with patch protection. He weaponises
the veil of scientism, the ideological cloak that legitimises his knowledge and
others like him, thus presenting their ‘science’ as the only legitimate source of
criminological knowledge that can or should influence the development of crime control
policies and interventions, especially when it comes to the ‘Indigenous
Problem’.
The charge of
evangelism brought against boutique criminologies like Cultural Criminology, or
Indigenous Criminology, comes from the same well as the colonial project of
ideology discussed earlier: it denotes a hierarchy of knowledge about crime and
social harm. Those that cloak themselves in the cloak of scientism are therefore and thereafter, ‘scientific’ and thus legitimate; those that are not, are simply 'boutique'. The former produces knowledge that is
‘solid’, factual and trustworthy’, the latter, knowledge that is unformed, subjective
and untrustworthy.
Let us return for
a moment to Pat Carlen’s supposedly devastating critique of the new, boutique criminologies:
They are the least desirable and potentially most self-damaging, aspects of the best of contemporary criminology.
I argue quite the opposite - their focus on criminological politics, their willingness to take a stance, to speak to and of Nga Morehu, is the most desirable and powerful features of these contemporary, so-called 'boutique' criminologies.
From the
perspective of those who practice Carlen’s scientific criminology, it is
the ‘science’ and the implicit objectivity and methods that establish ‘facts
about crime’ that distinguishes it from these other, subjective approaches, and
that should provide it a natural place at the policy table. But I say that these administrative, or
perhaps more accurately, authoritarian criminologies, are distinguished by a
number of other features other than their ‘science’, including:
i) their focus on research and social inquiry into actions the state defines as 'criminal';
ii) that they confine their critical gaze to issues related to those communities the state considers are 'problematic'; more often than not people of colour and working class youth, albeit minus any significant, meaningful engagement with these communities;
iii) confine their social inquiry to issues and questions that the policy sector deems important, for which they receive significant renumeration via the establishment of contractual, mutually beneficial relationships;
iv) limit their critical analysis of state systems, policies and programmes to programmatic effectiveness via evaluations devoid of historical context, and the wider political economy of state domination of justice in the neo-liberal moment, and lastly
v) empower themselves through the veil of scientism I spoke of earlier, an ideological construct that privileges their approach to measuring the Indigenous life-world, whilst denigrating Indigenous (and other) forms of knowledge.
And what has this
criminology brought us? More policing,
and not of the communitarian kind sometimes enjoyed by white communities, but
of the ‘hot spot’, militaristic tactics, violent style of policing that we have
been subjected to for decades. Is it effective? Well, that depends on how you measure 'effectiveness'; if by effective we mean more Aboriginal people
arrested and sent to prison, then yes.
If we mean more just and less violent, then no.
In comparison,
Chris Cunneen and I envisioned an Indigenous approaches to criminological inquiry based
on the following core principles:
1. Taking a stance of committed objectivity. This is as much a political stance as it is
an epistemological one.
2. Carrying on the theme of ‘politics’, the second principle entails
‘speaking truth to power’
3. The third is to ‘give back to the communities who have privileged you
with their knowledge and experience’, and not just in the form of sending them
a copy of your journal article.
4. Indigenous criminological research should be ‘real’: Meaning it must
come from within Indigenous peoples and their communities.
I would like now
to propose a fifth principle: this principle
will encapsulate all the others, an over-arching principle, if you like, and
it is devised as a direct response to, rebuff the position taken by Carlen, Weatherburn
and others like them; it is:
5. That Indigenous Criminology should be evangelical; in the sense that
it should strive to be subjective and biased; political, in that practitioners must take a stance that clearly aligns
with the needs of Indigenous communities and not the state; and it should set firm boundaries regarding membership, by rejecting those unable or
unwilling to adhere to the tikanga [philosophies] that form the basis of Indigenous
knowledge.
In response to Carlen I say that these are the most desirable and potentially most self-affirming aspects of the best of contemporary Indigenous academic criminology.
Lastly, one thing we must do is avoid wasting energy railing against the negative representations of Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous scholarship. The features that administrative and authoratarian criminologists offer as our weaknesses, are in fact what makes our work powerful, different and meaningful. In fact I would go further and argue that the reasons why our work is attacked for being 'too political' and 'too subjective', is because the richness of our research demonstrates the vacuous nature of the work of much of corporatist criminology.
