Breaking the Criminal Justice-Criminology Nexus - Empowering Indigenous Communities

Introduction

I want to begin by telling two stories in order to provide context for the issues I will cover in this presentation:

The stories

The 2013 European Criminology Conference: (see description of this case study included in the Indigenous Criminologist post of 29/10/2013).

Drivers of Crime: In 2008 New Zealand's Ministry of Justice organised a 1 day hui (meeting) with a range of service providers, researchers, academics, and community members as part of the consultation process for the development of what is now called the Drivers of Crime project.  In the lead up to the hui various government agencies 'bargained' with the Minister of Justice (and by extension, senior officials at MoJ) to ensure that the list of invitees represented a cross-section of the 'community'.  Te Puni Kokiri (the Ministry of Maori Development) was one of those agencies, and attempted to have added to the list myself and other 'critical Maori commentators', and current and past gang members who worked with this particular community to deliver social services.  Officials from the Minister's office and MoJ attempted to block our inclusion on the list and if not for Te Puni Kokiri officials standing their ground and persuading the then Minister for Maori Affairs (firmly supported by Dame Tariana Turia) were we eventually invited, thus ensuring a range of Maori voices were heard on the day.  But it would be wrong to think that 'we' won: when MoJ summary of the main points of discussion was released some weeks later the vast majority of issues raised by the critical Maori caucus was excluded; including repeated concerns expressed about the lack of Maori input into the development of crime control policy, racist/biased policing, overuse of imprisonment, and other significant, structural failures on the part of the formal justice system.

Since then a number of other similar incidents have been experienced by Indigenous scholars residing in Settler-Colonial jurisdictions with whom I am in regular contact.  These individuals have discussed a number of incidents, some historical, some more recent, that mirror my own experiences.  Our common experience of the white privileged, arrogant conduct of some members of the Policy Industry and criminology, has made me realise that in all our critical analysis of the many and varied Colonial Projects that are deployed in Settler-Colonial contexts to subjugate Indigenous peoples, one that requires our urgent empirical attention on our part, is the criminal justice/criminology nexus.  The rationale for this claim, this empirical call to arms, so to speak, is quite straightforward: it is essential that we expose the nefarious effects of the parasitic relationship between members of Western, Authoritarian Criminology and members of the Policy Industry, given the hegemony this nexus has on the development of empirical knowledge about Indigenous crime.

The Provocations

• The parasitic relationship between Eurocentric Criminology and the Policy Industry is one of the most affective, ‘subtle’ colonial projects deployed in settler-colonial contexts to subjugate Indigenous peoples.

And

• We must become more aggressive in our critique of, and challenge to, this relationship if we are to decrease the damage it does to our communities.

What follows represents the tentative explorations of two questions that are of increasing concern to Indigenous scholars (and our critical, non-Indigenous colleagues), namely:

• What role, if any, does the Criminal Justice-Criminology nexus (or relationship) play in the Settler Colonial subjugation of Indigenous peoples?

And

• What should we do about it?

Part of the rationale for privileging empirical analysis of the nexus between white criminology and the policy industry, is historical – the historical relationship between a) coloniality, b) criminal justice and c) the academy.  Biko Agozino has effectively exposed that the discipline of criminology developed significantly under colonialism, and was an essential player in the colonial states subjugation of Indigenes.  You cannot explain the contemporary moment; the ways in which peoples are subjugated, without reference to the past.  In the words of Hayden (2004):

"Rather than distance ourselves from the past, as the centrist amnesiacs would counsel, perhaps we should finally peel back the scabs and take a closer look at why all the wounds haven’t healed". 

Colonial Projects in the Neo-Colonial Context
As the Nigerian criminologist Biko Agozino has demonstrated, criminal justice is one of the most potent Colonial Projects the Settler Colonial state utilises in its ongoing subjugation of Indigenous peoples.  One of its key functions is in assisting the state to ‘control’ what it defines as significant wicked problems, i.e., Indigenous over-representation, which is invariable portrayed in governmental discourse as a ‘fact of criminal justice life’.  It is a ‘social fact’ so significant that that it poses a threat to social order that requires meaningful, authoritative, indeed at times violent, intervention in relation to the practice of crime control.

And if you think my use of the term ‘violent’ is perhaps overstating things a little, all I need say in response is ‘the Tuhoe raids’. 

In New Zealand the ‘Maori problem’ is described in governmental and media discourse as being so significant that our crime problem would disappear if we could significantly reduce it, because, according to an ACT party member quoted in the Otago Daily Times in 2012, we are “full of crime”. 

If I may I would like to interrupt the flow of my analysis to divert to an interesting argument I heard posited by a young Maori scholar at an International Indigenous law conference held in Brisbane in June last year: Kiritapu Allen made what I think is a highly provocative, but accurate statement that given the violence and disfuntionality that permeates criminal justice in New Zealand, perhaps including the term ‘system’ in its title is somewhat misleading.  Instead, we should view it as a series of inter-linked incidents of violence, coated in the stink of colonialism. 

Much of the criminal justice system response to the ‘wicked problem’ of Maori over-representation comes in the form of structural violence, including, but not exclusively

• militaristic-style policing strategies;

• biased application of public disorder offences and discretionary powers;

• the criminal justice-led large-scale removal of Indigenous children and youth to detention centres; and

• and of Indigenous adults to the prison system – a form of displacement and confinement that O’Connor calls the ‘New Removals’ and Chris Cunneen ‘the new stolen generation’, with reference to the Australian context. 

I consider these ‘strategies’ as examples of overt violence perpetrated by the criminal justice sector against Indigenous peoples. 

Then we have a range of subtle, insidious strategies of containment and control, including:

• the aforementioned strategy of blocking Maori participation in forums that impact the design of policy;

• reliance on in-house Maori ‘experts’ to direct the development of policies for Maori, in place of meaningful engagement with Maori communities and Maori ‘experts’

• meaningless consultation exercises undertaken after policies and interventions have been designed and signed off by a CE, Minister or Cabinet;

• reliance on Maori/Aboriginal strategies that have no impact on an agencies bottom-line, and that make little or no reference to the socio-economic marginalisation of Indigenous peoples and used by agencies to market themselves as ‘culturally aware’;

• restricting or blocking access to sites of justice and undertaking independent, empirical research, and blocking research on criminal justice issues of importance to Maori, including bias, experiences of policing and imprisonment;

• arrogant dismissal of Maori knowledge and programmatic response to social harm in preference for importing theories, policies, legislation and interventions from western, high crime contexts;

• privileging academic literature and research on Indigenous issues and peoples carried out by white, western, administrative/authoritarian criminologists, whilst ignoring the Indigenous research lexicon; and

• indigenisation, or the inappropriate utilisation of Indigenous symbols, language and cultural artifacts to ‘sex up’ imported, ineffective crime control policies, like boot camps or Multi-Systemic Therapy, that are then forced upon our communities, and which do little to alleviate our over-representation in the criminal justice system. 

The white privileged criminological academy isn’t much better.  The range of disempowering behaviours perpetrated by its members is just as extensive, including:

• confine their critical criminological gaze to issues relating to state-defined problem populations, more often than not people of colour and working class youth, without significant engagement with individuals or communities from these populations – in other words they privilege the use of non-engaging methodologies; a reliance on statistical analysis and restrictive surveys at the expense of actually talking with brown people;

• confine their uncritical criminological gaze to state-run justice processes, policies, legislation and issues that the state deems important, for which they receive generous remuneration via the establishment of parasitic contractual relations;

• limit their ‘critical analysis’ of state systems and policies on programme effectiveness and evaluation largely devoid of historical context and the wider political economy of the state’s dominance of ‘justice’ in the neo-liberal moment – in other words their research and analysis is devoid of critical consideration of minor issues like genocide, coloniality, land grabs, destruction of key social and political institutions, biological and cultural warfare, etc; and

• empower themselves through the veil of scientism, an ideological construct that privileges the Eurocentric, supposedly ‘enlightened’ approach to measuring the Indigenous life-world, whilst denigrating Indigenous (and other) forms of knowledge that seek to explain the social world from the perspective of the Other.

Doing Imperialism Quietly?  The Criminal Justice-Criminology Nexus as Structural Violence

No longer able to attain political legitimacy by deploying overtly racist, assimilationist strategies such as the forced removal of our children in militaristic fashion, least it results in international condemnation, or banning our language and cultural practices through legislation, or replicating the physical genocide of the Indian Wars carried out in Canada and the U.S, or the killing times in Australia, the neo-liberal settler state and its supporting institutions of the body politic, in particular the white privileged academy, nevertheless continues to deploy structural violence against Indigenous peoples.  This comes in the form of  the development and application of racist criminological knowledge and interventions, made possible via collusion between white privileged academics and the policy sector.

This brings me full circle, to the stories I told at the beginning of the presentation.  How is it that policy workers and white privileged criminologists continue to produce bullshit about Maori and other Indigenous peoples?  More importantly, how is it that this bullshit still holds sway with the policy sector?  Answering these questions in full would require a whole presentation of its own.  So I’ll restrict myself to just 2 key reasons: a) because of their arrogance, related to a) because we are too nice. 

Doing Things for Ourselves

There are a number of practical, administrative responses either underway or that should be considered, including:

Research Project – Racism in the Academy;

International Journal of Indigenous Justice (IJIJ);

International Congress of Indigenous Justice (ICIJ);

All of these activities were discussed in the Indigenous Criminologist blog released on 31/7/2014.  

We urgently require a major change in our approach to the trash the Policy Industry and its parasitic partner, Authoritarian Criminology, produce about Indigenous peoples.  We need to become more aggressive in our approach to exposing the racism and white, colonial privilege that underpins their approach to the ‘Indigenous problem’.  Only by challenging the criminal justice-criminology nexus in an aggressive manner, and through the development and application of a Critical Indigenous Criminology, will we challenge the hegemony the members of this 'axis of bullshit' hold over the development of supposedly ‘legitimate’ knowledge about 'the Indigenous experience'.  Perhaps then we might finally have a say in the development of policies, legislation and interventions that reflect our approaches to dealing with social harm and our lived experiences, rather than the exotic fantasies of white privileged policy workers and academics. 

A Comment on the Epistemic Violence of White Academic Privilege - Part 1

The following blog is part 1 of a two part entry which provides an overview of the strategies and techniques of neo-colonial, epistemic violence perpetrated by the Academy against Indigenous scholars and communities.  Part 2, which will be posted in December, will report on recent research by the author and his colleagues, on Indigenous scholars’ experiences of racism within academic institutions.

Introduction

Indigenous peoples in all Settler-Colonial societies experience a number of issues when confronting both the criminal justice system and the academic discipline of criminology, including:

That the imposition of a criminal justice system, modelled on existing and developing Western models, was key to advancing the colonising process, especially the control and eventual subjugation of Indigenous peoples.

That the criminal justice system itself plays a significant role in the over-representation of Indigenous peoples.

That the criminal justice system and its supporting discipline, criminology, respond to Indigenous justice philosophies, theories and practices by portraying them as primitive, myth-based, and, therefore, illegitimate.  Furthermore, the ‘system’ marginalises Indigenous knowledge by employing rhetorical devices that construct it as ‘traditional’ and therefore as the antithesis of the preferred ‘scientific’ approach.  Except that is, for beliefs, practices and rituals policy makers and criminologists deem to be ‘culturally acceptable’, such as sitting in a circle or saying an ancient pray.  In other words, elements of the Indigenous world are utilised for their ability to eroticise and legitimise the criminal justice system, and not so much for their ability to empower Indigenous peoples.

And, a major player in the processes of marginalisation previously described is the discipline of criminology, or more accurately a particularly virulent derivative I have referred to previously as Authoritarian Criminology. 

Authoritarian Criminology

The charge that Criminology was a major player in the colonising enterprise within Settler-Colonial societies and other colonial contexts has only recently been given serious attention from those working in the discipline, such as Biko Agozino and Chris Cunneen; although we must acknowledge the work of Franz Fanon and others in the 1950s onwards is point out the importance of the social-behavioural sciences (Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology), and even history, in the colonial enterprise. 

Authoritarian Criminology can be identified by the following core practices:

Research, publications generally focuses on the conceptualisation of crime (and its definition) and what constitutes legitimate enquiry, as defined by the state.

Practitioners confine their critical criminological gaze to issues relating to state-defined problem populations: more often than not the targets of their empirical enquiry are people of colour and working class youth; and too often the research is carried out with little or no direct engagement with individuals, organisations or communities from these population groups.

Confine their enquiries to problems and questions that the state deems important for which they receive remuneration via the establishment of contractual relations.

Limit their critical analysis of state systems and policies on programme effectiveness and evaluation largely devoid of historical context and wider political economy of the state’s dominance of justice in the neo-liberal moment.

Empower themselves through the veil of scientism, an ideological construct that privileges their approach to measuring the Indigenous life-world, whilst denigrating Indigenous (and other) forms of knowledge that seek to explain the social world from the perspective of the Other.

Utilise the process of myth construction and maintenance in a hegemonic exercise aimed at privileging its ‘way of knowing’ in the policy making process, over that of potential competitors.

Silence Indigenous academics (and our critical, non-Indigenous colleagues) by deploying well-worn, racist strategies such as focusing on our ‘emotional’ responses to unethical or racist conduct (more about these strategies in Part 2 of this entry). 

So, what needs to be done to combat the hegemony of Authoritarian Criminology in deciding what is/is valid knowledge and dominate policy-making, especially in the development of Indigenous policy; activities that can most accurately described as contemporary manifestations of colonialist, epistemic violence?

The Unfortunate Truth about Policy and the Academy

Before we begin to construct effective strategies for empowering ourselves, we must first acknowledge the following unpleasant truth about policy-making, policy makers and certain influential members of the academy: Neither the state (the policy makers) nor the predominantly white, middle class, privileged Western academy is simply going to stop what it is doing.  There is too much at stake for them to do so, including power, authority, prestige and, most especially of import to their institutions, grant monies, for them to voluntarily hand over the authority they have given themselves to speak for us, to the Indigenous Other and our critical, non-Indigenous collaborators.  The truth is we will have to break the hold they have on speaking about ‘our experience’, and fight them for the privilege of being able to directly influence the development of policy that impacts our communities. 

The importance of breaking this monopoly was brought home to me recently when I read two papers by non-Indigenous academics who had picked up government-funded research contracts on Indigenous issues, and then had to go and find out how to actually ‘do research’ with Indigenous peoples!  What?  You apply for a project for which you actually do not have the methodological know how or the cultural competency to carry out, and after you get the nod you then try to find out about ‘Aboriginals’?  As an experienced Indigenous academic, two questions immediately sprang to mind when I was confronted with these two examples:  a) why are government agencies giving contracts and grant monies to academics who demonstrably lack the requisite skills or knowledge to carry out emancipatory, empowering research with Indigenous peoples?  There are a number of ways we can explain this situation, but for now I’ll offer just two: i) because the government officials who make these decisions have just as little knowledge and experience of the Indigenous context so they go for academics who ‘look and act like them’; and/or ii) they go for the ‘safe option’, namely academics who will toe the line by only asking safe questions (meaning questions that will not elicit direct criticism of an  agency or their Minister) and who will stick to the institutional script.  And, what is for me the most important question, b) why are non-Indigenous academics without the requisite methodological and ‘cultural’ experience and knowledge applying for these grants? Is it ego, ignorance, or a combination of both?  I will finish on this issue by saying that I believe that one of the reasons why they feel they are able to apply for said grants when they clearly should not, is because for so long now they have been able to do so without being challenged by the Indigenous Academy.  Furthermore, it was/is possible for them to do so because we have historically done little to confront the government officials who handed the grant monies over to them to carry out their ‘Indigenous research’.

Breaking the Hegemony of Authoritarian Criminology

There are a number of ways we can respond in order to extract authority and respect from policy makers and the academy:

Continue to work ‘within the system’ (or systems) and provide meaningful support to the academy and the state to enhance Indigenous participation in their knowledge construction exercises, as some are doing already.  For example, in the New Zealand context we could use our Treaty settlement monies to fund scholarships so that we make our peoples more attractive to the academy and the public service.  However, 10 years of experience in the public service and numerous conversations with other Indigenous peoples working in the policy environment, informs me there are significant limitations involved in putting all our eggs in that particular basket. After all, the state is the entity thru which the immediate post-colonial and current neo-colonial disempowerment of Indigenous peoples is facilitated.  It (the Settler-Colonial state) is reluctant to treat us as human, as capable of looking after our own.  A recent case in point was the racist NTER policy implemented in Australia in the mid-2000s.  Continuing engagement and involvement with the policy sector is a legitimate and necessary approach, but much more is required.

Working within the academy by using the tools and methods of the academy to challenge the processes it utilises to achieve hegemony, with the added factor of engaging in research with Indigenous peoples, and not ‘on’ coloured people.  We must continue to develop our own counter-colonial theories and methodologies that challenge the legitimacy of the Academy’s tools and the exalted position its practitioners give themselves, too often on the backs of Indigenous peoples.  We must actively challenge the knowledge constructed about us, but rarely with us.  In other words, we must become or remain political (or, if you work in policy, ‘radical’); and much more aggressive (intellectually) towards the work of policy makers and members of the academy, especially Authoritarian Criminologists.

As I have hinted in an earlier blog, for every diplomat and peacemaker, we must have an academic warrior, someone who is part of a developing ‘Warrior Criminology’.  We cannot afford to be afraid of being called ‘aggressive’ or ‘emotional’, as we often are when we critique policy makers and academics and confront them directly for their racist behaviour and for the methodological shortcomings of their work.  In fact, our goal should be to embarrass them as much as possible: too often crap gets published about us about which little is said publicly.  Instead, we get annoyed and then moan at each other about some recent rubbish published in an ‘A journal’, but then bow to the silly conventions of the Eurocentric discipline that are built to protect its practitioners from any direct criticism of their shonky work, and most especially when they exhibit racist and unethical conduct. 

Recent examples of work about ‘us’ that deserved Indigenous censure included a 2008 report on Maori and crime by New Zealand’s Department of Corrections, and one on race and crime; both of which managed somehow to avoid any meaningful engagement with the critical Indigenous lexicon.  Can you imagine a journal article getting the green light if it focused on the contemporary development of restorative justice theory, but avoided the work of Howard Zehr,  John Braithwaite or one of the other founding ‘fathers’?  No?  Well, too often that is exactly what happens when non-Indigenous criminologists write about ‘us’: all of a sudden white man’s magic makes Indigenous scholarship disappear.  What this argument demonstrates is that we must become more active and strident in critiquing work that ignores Indigenous scholarship, or where the authors report on the Indigenous experience while avoiding engagement with Indigenous peoples.  We cannot allow the voice of the Institutional Other, the so-called ‘scientific criminologist’ – or as I prefer to call them, the Authoritarian Criminologist - to remain the dominant voice on the Indigenous experience because too often these authors are not telling Our Stories.