Presentation to the Annual Whanau Ora Symposium, Dunedin, April 2021

 Kia ora all

Attached to this blog is a presentation I did to the annual Whanau Ora Symposium, held in Dunedin in April 2021, a critical commentary on racial profiling and crime control policy development in Aotearoa New Zealand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyaaHo7h-TA&t=532s 

The Evangelism of Indigenous Criminology

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. 

Presentation to the Griffith University Symposium: Bringing the 'Alternative' Back into Restorative Justice, Wednesday 25 November 2020

Kia ora all

Here is the link to my recorded keynote of the Griffith University Symposium Bringing the 'Alternative' Back into Restorative Justice, held on Wednesday 25 November 2020.

The title of the presentation was 'Restorative Justice in the Land of the Long White Lie'

Old Wine in an Old Bottle? An Indigenous Commentary on the Criminology of the Global South

The idea for the title of this presentation came from a discussion I had in early 2019 with a prominent Australian Aboriginal scholar regarding the Criminology of the Global South (from here-on-in Southern Criminology), during which he described engaging with material produced by Australian members of this ‘new’ criminological movement, as akin to drinking ‘old wine out of a dirty bottle’.  The old wine refers to the rehashed Eurocentric theories and focus of the new criminology, while the dirty bottle referred to the fact that Southern Criminology arose from the same bastion of white privilege, the neo-liberal university, as had most of the schools of criminology that have existed previously.

According to advocates, Southern Criminology is the latest criminological project seeking to ‘decolonise’ the discipline, removing it from its ‘Northern’, Eurocentric foundations and theoretical bias.

The esteemed British scholar Matthews, described Southern Criminology as “probably the most significant theoretical development in the recent period”, and just recently Fonseca described the movement as “a gush of fresh air in the debate involving studies of crime, crime control and punishment” (quoted in Moosava, 2019).

I agree with the gush of air part of that last quote, but I not as yet convinced of its freshness, given the conduct of some of its Australian adherents towards Indigenous scholars and scholarship over the past decade, and the lack of meaningful engagement with our work and with Indigenous peoples in general.  

Unlike Leon Moosavi’s paper published in the British Journal of Criminology in 2019, I will not be offering a ‘friendly critique’ of this supposedly ‘new’ criminological movement.  If you’ve read Moosavi’s paper you will recall that he chose to offer a friendly critique Southern Criminology because he wanted to enhance the project due in part, to a belief that it has a solidarity with the principles of decolonising criminology rather than scepticism about its necessity or potential worth to the cause of social (and especially to Indigenous) justice. Well right now I am sceptical not so much of the intent of Southern Criminologists, because thus far they are saying pretty much all the right things - racism bad, inequality bad, free us from the shackles of ‘Northern’ theory, ‘decolonise the discipline’, and speak for the disaffected - etc, etc.  However, demonstrating support for decolonisation required much more than a few statements included in an article here or there, or collected edition/handbook.  We, and by that I mean Indigenous peoples, have heard it all before, so we tend to judge those who claim to be our ‘allies’ on their actual conduct, or, as this is an academic exercise, on the content of their research (and their conduct during and after it), what they say about us, who they have invited to speak about us, and if they are engaging respectfully and meaningfully with us. 

The theorist who appears to have greatly influenced the idea for a Southern Criminology is Raewyn Connell, author of that well-known work Southern Theory (2007).  In that work Connell advanced the argument for the ‘South’ to create its own body of theory and knowledge.  Her reasoning for offering this proposition: because of the orientalist attitude that pervades the social sciences that views academic scholarship and knowledge emanating from the South as of poor quality and not worth consideration.

As an Indigenous person, and researcher, I do not entirely disagree with Connell’s assessment of the social sciences. In my experience this attitude is pervasive within the discipline of criminology; for example when a scholar like Don Weatherburn write as recently as 2014, that there is nothing for us to learn from Indigenous knowledge about the causes of crime, because all we need to know we can get from western science (a not uncommon sentiment amongst Australian criminologists in my experience), then Connell is clearly onto something.  But she, just like many of the scholars involved in Southern Criminology in my part of the world, are talking about a situation and an issue that we Indigenous people have long known about, have been researching, and actively seeking to address.  One must wonder to what extent Southern Criminology is yet another example of a bunch of (predominantly white) criminologists turning up extremely late to our party…. largely uninvited.

The idea that Australian criminology is part of the periphery – a central platform of the rationale for Southern Criminology - greatly amuses me.  Why?  Because of the long and ongoing history of bigotry within Australian Criminology and the paternalistic and colonialist attitudes towards Indigenous people and our knowledge.  I’ll return to this idea of Australian criminology as some backward, ignored, lonely bunch, looking with longing to the Great North just to be recognised, like some teenager at the school dance hoping someone, anyone, will ask him or her to dance, a little later.

So, let us briefly discuss this project, this Southern Criminology and in so doing I am going to skim briefly and broadly over the main arguments (for its existence), etc, for a detailed understanding read the extant literature:

It starts with the observation that criminological theories and concepts have largely been produced in ‘the West’, meaning Europe, the North America.  It is also assumed that the ‘knowledge of the North’ can be readily transported to the periphery, and that this knowledge will be relevant anywhere (Moosavi, 2019), whether psycho-therapeutic programs or policing tactics, or entire prison regimes, as in the case of New Zealand’s importation the Integrated Offender Management system from Canada in the early 2000’s. 

Let me just pause here for a moment because I need to say something about this portrayal of the ‘North’.  As an Indigenous scholar I need to say that when we hear or read the term criminology of North American and Western Europe, the moment it hits our brain it is translated into White Criminology: criminology by and for white people who then do us poor natives a huge favour by offering us their gift of criminological knowledge to fix crime problems generated mostly from the colonising behaviour of their ancestors, or indeed themselves, if my experience of Australian criminologists is anything to go by.

Moosava (2019) also reports that Southern criminologists are motivated by the need to challenge the largely one directional nature of knowledge flow (North to South) in order to attain a more rounded criminological knowledge of crime and social harm.  In this regard, much of what I have read thus far from the Australasian practitioners of Southern Criminology leads me to believe that what they are doing or intend to do is privilege the knowledge and experiences of marginalised communities.

Any attempt by members of Southern Criminology to prioritise the experiences of the marginalised, if this principle were to result in concrete action on their part, would indeed be welcomed by Indigenous communities.  But of course, some of us are already doing just that.  And so to presage one of my critiques of Southern Criminology - at least the Australian variant - nothing I’ve read so far about their motivations or the core focus of their work is in fact new, as I stated previously, Indigenous scholars have been doing it, and not just saying it, for decades.

I agree with Moosava’s point that so far Southern criminologists have not offered enough reflection on whether the decolonisation of criminology is even possible given the discipline’s Western origins, and its long and continuing parasitic relationship with the state.  The difficulty of that disentanglement from the colonialist and paternalistic mindset of criminology I will highlight with a couple of examples below.

Secondly, I also agree with Moosava’s contention that the Australian branch of Southern Criminology is highly Eurocentic in terms of theory and personnel.  He rightly points out that in the Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South released in 2018, almost half of the 79 contributors are based in Australian institutions, and the vast majority were white.  This is reflective of the way in which Southern Criminology is dominated by Australian criminologists to such an extent that Moosava writes that it may be more accurate to describe it as ‘Australian Criminology’.

At this point Southern Criminology is not representative of the disaffected communities who truly represent the South, such as the Indigenous peoples residing in settler-colonial jurisdictions. For this reason, its claims to be a decolonising project are groundless, unless of course they mean they are decolonising themselves, in which case we wish them all the best.

This brings us to the inevitable question: how far ‘South’ do you need to be, to be able to truly, accurately call yourself a ‘Southern Criminology’; how disaffected, ignored or marginalised?  Well, I put it to you that I needs to be a lot further south than the comfortable, privileged position of academics in the wealthy academic institutions of Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne.

Right now, I am extremely pessimistic about Southern Criminology, especially the leadership of its Australian branch, can engage with our experiences in a meaningful way.  For example, comments by one of the founders of Southern Criminology during a keynote speech at a recent, major criminology conference, draw attention to the continued prevalence of ‘old school’ attitudes towards Indigenous scholarship within the ‘movement’.  During question time they were asked what made this ‘new criminology’ different from others that seek to decolonise the discipline, such as post-colonial criminology, peacemaker criminology, counter-colonial and Indigenous criminology’s, to which they answered: ‘these criminology’s romanticise the other’, meaning they mythologise our old ways of doing justice and misrepresent the causes of Indigenous offending.  As I have said in an earlier blog, this portrayal of ‘our criminology’ does not reflect the research and publications we have produced about Indigenous peoples and crime.  How is this attitude any different from Don Weatherburn’s ignorant dismissal of Indigenous knowledge?  I put it to you all that it is not.

I want to finish on one last point: in a 2016 article, Carrington et al, all leaders in the development of Southern Criminology, stated that “[t]o be clear… our purpose is not to add to the growing catalogue of new criminology’s... [Southern Criminology] seeks to modify the criminological field to make it more inclusive of histories and patterns of crime, justice and security outside the global North... [It] seeks to work with and complement—to Southernize—other established and emerging fields in criminology: feminist, green, postcolonial, queer, rural, cultural and Asian. (2016: 11; emphasis mine).  The wording is unfortunately, because it leads one to ask, are they seeking to Southernise, or Colonise these other criminology’s?  It also gives the impression that something vital is missing from them, without clarifying exactly what ‘it’ is, and what they offer that is better.  And so, when Southern Criminologists call for ‘the periphery to invade the centre’ (Brown 2018: 96), some may recoil at what they might feel is imperialist language.  Again, I ask are they trying to decolonise or colonise?

Ok, so, how do we explain the strange conduct of some of the Australian contingent?  I think that Leon Moosavi, in his article from 2019, hits the nail on the head when he wrote that one of the most urgent matters for Southern Criminology to address is whether Australia should be considered as part of the Global South.  Mark Brown (2018: 93) has also identified this as a concern, stating that ‘Southern criminology faces its own existential question: what makes you Southern?’  This question divides opinion amongst proponents of Southern criminology. Some believe that Australia is one of the ‘selected enclaves of the symbolic north located south of the equator’ (Donnermeyer 2017: 128), whereas others emulate Raewyn Connell’s view that Australia is marginalized in similar ways to other Global South countries (Connell 2007: 212).

Australian scholarship may often be ignored by those in the United States and the United Kingdom, and Australia’s geographic location may make it harder for Australian scholars to participate in international academic events, but Australia is still a country that is developed, wealthy, stable, autonomous and privileged, meaning that suggesting that Australia is part of the Global South is problematic. At best, Australia may be part of the ‘semiperiphery’ (Medina 2011), but it still does not share the same hardship as the Asian, African and Latin American countries that are typically considered as part of the Global South, which is noteworthy because it has been suggested that a key component of ‘epistemologies of the South’ is that they comprise ‘knowledge born in struggle’ (Santos 2014: x).

The idea that Australian criminology is isolated from its Northern counterparts is nonsense.  Overall, their knowledge is not borne of struggle as Santos contends is a key marker of Southern Criminology, unless you define ‘struggle’ as receiving a lukewarm coffee from a café on the way to work.  If you want to see knowledge borne of struggle then go talk to Indigenous and African American scholars and we’ll tell you about our experiences of dealing with racists in the academy, of having our knowledge denigrated, our cultural practices and languages incorporated into departmental and institutional strategic plans (without meaningful funding attached); our people used as fodder as members of the academy work to credentilise themselves to move up in seniority.

The truth is we are already ‘Southern’ and we don’t need a bunch of white criminologists to show us what is required to decolonise the discipline; we’ve been doing it for a lot longer than this latest criminological fad was conceived.  Therefore, I do not advocate for the decolonisation of criminology; instead I call for the formulation of our own social justice-oriented discipline.  Why?  Because I believe our energy is best directed at the needs of our own communities, rather than wasting it on showing white academics how to behave more ethically.  In the end, it is not our job as Indigenous scholars to fix the problems of whitecentric criminology – let’s leave them to ‘southernise’ themselves.

References

Brown, M (2018) Southern Criminology in the Post-colony: More than a ‘Derivative Discourse?, in K. Carrington, R. Hogg, J. Scott and M. Sozzo (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan: 83-104.

Carrington, K; Sozzo, M and Hogg, R (2016) Southern Criminology, British Journal of Criminology, 56: 1–20.

Connell, R (2007) Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Donnermeyer, J (2017) The Place of Rural in a Southern Criminology, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6: 118–32.

Medina, J (2011) Doing Criminology in the ‘Semi-Periphery’ and the ‘Periphery’, in C. Smith, S. Zhang and R. Barberet (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of International Criminology. New York: Routledge: 13-23.

Moosavi, L (2019) A Friendly Critique of ‘Asian Criminology’ and ‘Southern Criminology’, British Journal of Criminology, 59: 257-275.

Santos, B (2014) Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.

Weatherburn, D (2014) Arresting Incarceration: Pathways Out of Indigenous Imprisonment. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.

Community Research Webinar: Challenges and Opportunites for addressing inequities of the NZ justice system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_bGsga9eaI&t=125

A Commentary on Indigenous Research Ethics

The following commentary offers an Indigenous perspective with institutionalised research ethics processes.

http://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2020/04/23/decolonising-research-through-emancipatory-indigenous-ethics/

Police Racism and the Asshole Trajectory

Setting the Scene

Early in 2017 I was involved in a Facebook discussion with friends about police, racism and Indigenous peoples.

The discussion began with a statement I posted that a key driver of Maori over-representation in crime statistics was due to the high level of police surveillance and 'policing' of Maori, especially Maori youth.

Enter two Facebook 'friends' (now 'ex' friends... obviously), both ex-cops.  The first started his comments by pointing out a) not all cops are racist, b) Maori offending is due to poor parenting, and other similar statements.  In response to criticism of his statements, including requests for evidence to support his position said friend became increasingly bigoted in his comments, ending with a claim that Maori crime was a result of an undefined 'thing' called 'Maori privilege'.

Enter ex-cop #2 who began his contribution by making 2 fairly predictable statements: ex-cop #1 was a 'great bloke' who helped lot of young people, and, just like his mate, argued that 'not all cops are racist'.

As with ex-cop #1, pointing out that a) no one had actually said that all cops were racist, but that b) some actually are and we need to discuss and analyse their conduct, made no difference as ex-cop #2 continued to make pointless, unrelated comments about the great work cops do.  But just like ex-cop #1, each time his unsupported comments were challenged, his posts became ever more shrill, aggressive and personal, and included stock standard responses of the pro-cop, anti-Maori brigade, such as 'Maori lack responsibility,' 'their culture is violent', through to the old chestnut, 'unless you've worn the uniform you don't know what the job is like'.  This last statement I have often heard and it always intrigues me.  I have found it is commonly used by cops/ex-cops when their conduct and that of their organisation is criticised; and the intent of this comment is obvious, to shut down any criticism of police behaviour, and most especially, police misconduct.

Arguing with (Ex)Cops and the the Asshole Trajectory

I learnt a couple of things from my engagement with these ex-cops, firstly, it is a waste of time debating the issue of police racism with ex-cops as no amount of research-generated evidence deters them from their belief that racism is a) non-existent in New Zealand's police service, or b) if it does exist it is due to a 'few bad apples' while the barrel overall is full of wonderful, helpful social justice warriors.  Entering into a debate with many ex-cops is to enter a fact-free zone full of sulking, bullying, threats and harassment, all of which I experienced over the 12 months following the Facebook debate, when I continued to receive vacuous, poorly informed emails from one of the ex-cops, in an attempt, according to him, to 'moderate' my comments on police and racism.

And secondly, debates and discussions with this group often take on a readily identifiable trajectory of behaviour that I call The Asshole Trajectory, which looks something like this:

Phase 1: The Reasonable Man

Phase one is easy to discern and describe, said individual(s) enter the discussion and/or debate with what they (but not always everyone else) believe are 'reasonable' points or arguments. For example ,'Dave's a good bloke, he helped lots of young people when he was a cop; he really cared', and 'not all cops are racist'.

Phase 2: The Protector

Phase 2 kicks in when much to their confusion, everyone continues to discuss police racism, at which point their comments become more 'protective' of the reputation of the police as an institution, such as 'well you know the job is really hard; you wouldn't understand, you've not worn the uniform; and 'I never saw any racism when I was a cop' (meaning since they didn't experience it, it doesn't exist).

Phase 3: The Wounded Veteran

Further criticism of their comments, and unmet requests that they provide supporting evidence for their claims, brings on phase 3, what I call 'the big sulk'.  During this stage the comments become increasingly personal,of the 'you are a typical academic' kind, which is meant to infer that the 'ivory tower' of academia renders commentators like me disconnected from our community, usually followed by comments about all abuse and prejudice they experienced as cops to demonstrate that cops also suffered bigotry. And there is no denying that sometimes they do experience it, but our discussion was the bigotry of police, an issue that my 2 friends failed to address throughout the discussion.

Phase 4: The Asshole

And lastly, as more and more criticism of their posts piles on, as they collapse under the weight of their unevidenced, poorly crafted arguments, they move into the last phase,where their commentary turns to personal insults and bigotry.  It is in the last phase of the Asshole Trajectory, that you will receive emails and facebook posts with comments like 'well, you lot ate the Moriori, 'the haka supports domestic violence', and 'I am proud that I locked up so many of your bros', etc, etc.  It is during this phase that they finally expose themselves to be an asshole; but unfortunately an asshole who once wielded the privilege and power that comes from wearing the New Zealand Police uniform, and policed our rangatahi/youth and our communities.

University of Waikato Tauranga Public Lecture Series

Part 2 - Reducing Our Prison Population

Reducing Our Prison Population - Past Failures and New Approaches

The following blog is based on notes from a presentation given as part of the University of Wollongong Tauranga campuses public lecture series for 2018:

Introduction

Earlier this year the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little announced the latest in what has been, since the late 1980s, a long line of reviews, tax payer-funded summits and inter-agency, ‘whole-of-government’ projects aimed at making the criminal justice system work more efficiently and effectively. 

Officially launched at a summit held in Porirua in October, the stated aim of the review is to reduce New Zealand’s prison muster by 30 percent over the next 15 years.  And a specific focus of the review is on the significant over-representation of Maori in the prison population specifically, and in the criminal justice system overall.

This presentation represents a modest offering in response to the current government’s attempt to make the justice system more effective, and just.

Before I move into the main part of my presentation, I want to say something about the focus and intent of my commentary:

There are two key themes that both run thru my presentation and join the elements together:

The policy sector/political class has had the lead for decades in developing and implementing responses to social harm.  It is fair to say that its impact has been mixed, with as many failures as successes, although given the lack of independent scrutiny of its activities, this is a subjective proposition I make, rather than an empirical one.  However, regardless of its many failures, it is a necessary part of any attempt we make to reduce the prison population, and so reform of the policy sector and the political context of crime control policy development is an absolute must if we are to meet the 30% reduction target set by Minister Little.

Any substantive move to reduce the prison population requires a significant increase in the role of communities, including community-based service providers, in the development and delivery of policies and interventions.  The days of the wholesale importation of policies and interventions from other high crime jurisdictions need to be a thing of the past.

PART I

Overview of Past Attempts to Review Criminal Justice

By way of background and to add context to my commentary, it is based on 10 years working in the policy sector, the majority spent analysing crime control policy), and some 15 years carrying out research on crime control in settler-colonial jurisdictions.

I will use examples and case studies gleamed from my policy and research experience to a) highlight reasons why we have failed to arrest the rate of imprisonment, to reduce the harm that occurs in our communities, and to eradicate bias and racism within the criminal justice system, and b) evidence my key argument for a significant overhaul of the policy industry and the political classes’ influence on crime control policy, without which any significant reduction in crime, social harm and use of imprisonment is impossible.

Failures and Examples

When I arrived at Corrections in early 2001, the agency was in the process of implementing the Integrated Offender Management (IOM) initiative.  Imported more or less wholesale from Canada, IOM was intended to streamline the delivery of prison-based services to inmates to ensure their 'sentence plans' matched their 'criminogenic needs', such as anger management and alcohol and drug dependency.

The importation of IOM provides a case study that encapsulates all that is wrong with the crime control policy sector in New Zealand:

It was evident that senior management was hell-bent in introducing the process, regardless of criticism or dissent: For that reason ‘consultation’ with internal and external stakeholders was superficial, a tick-the-box exercise. I personally attended 3 so-called consultations, and read the reports written thereafter, in each one any criticism or difficult question had been either not included, or re-worded to enable the department of answer from a pre-conceived suite of answers.

The importation exercise involved liberal use of what is most accurately called the orientalisation of the social context with regards the potential impact of the process on Maori.  Orientalisation here refers to the tendency of the policy sector to justify importing policies and interventions on the basis that they 'work for African Americans' so will work for other people of colours, like Maori. 

The hegemony of policy-based evidence: a few years after the implementation of IOM and its suite of criminogenic interventions, time came for the analysis and release of the first tranche of outcome-based data, meaning the impact of the programmes on recidivism.  The results were, to say the least, not what the department had predicted.  For some interventions – such as Straight Thinking - Maori who did not attend had lower recidivism rates than those that did.  The ‘report’ was suddenly taken from the primary author to be ‘edited’, due to the poor results of the programmes.

The implementation  of IOM by Corrections highlights a number of failings across the criminal justice sector that explains its poor record of impacting crime rates, a number of which I will return to throughout this presentation namely that:

The propensity for the sector to rely on importing crime control policies and interventions from other high crime, western jurisdictions.

Retrofitting crime control policies and processes to the New Zealand context without the requisite engagement and research work required to ensure effectiveness and ‘fit’.

An aversion by the major criminal justice agencies to admit mistakes, release information that does not portray them in a good light.

An unwillingness to trust the ‘community’ here to assist in development effective responses to social harm.

Science and Evidence-Based Policy are Not King

The rise of IOM coincided with a revolution within many of the crime control agencies wherein 'science' and 'evidence' became the basis of policy-making, the development of interventions, and allocation of resources.  At least that is what the policy sector told itself and the public from the early 2000s onwards.  

Quite often this was not the case, with pertinent evidence being totally ignored, or the evidence that suits a predetermined policy outcome favoured over the messy stuff, like evidence that contradicts a Cabinet Minister's pet project, or that highlights the negative impact of government’s social and economic policy.

A recent, classic example of policy implementation that ignored available evidence was the government's decision to introduce boot camps.  No firm evidence existed to indicate that this intervention would result in positive outcomes for youth, but it was implemented regardless.  Why? Well, there are a number of reasons but in this particular case the answers are 'populist politics' and 'ideology'.

To understand how such a poorly performing crime control intervention could be introduced, you have to ignore the rhetoric that New Zealand's policy sector is apolitical (as in neutral) and that policy decisions are based on scientifically-derived evidence.  

This is often not the case in the crime control sector. The introduction of boot camps was purely ideological - of the 'get tough on crime and bring back military-style discipline for those young thugs' type you will often hear in RSA bars; the 'a good thrashing never did me any harm' approach to social policy. 

To their credit Ministry of Justice officials provided their Minister with a thorough briefing, one that highlighted the lack of evidence that the intervention would in fact, reduce youth offending.  The Minister moved forward with the policy, simply noting that he had “received, but not read the briefing”.  Let me repeat that, he had “received but not read” a briefing.  I will come back to this ‘attitude’ soon.

 I wish to be clear about one thing - sometimes evidence has a significant impact on policy development and implementation.  My argument here is sometimes it does not.  The policy process can be, and often is, highly political and ideological, with interventions and policies influenced as much by who a Minister was drinking with last week, as it is on independent, empirical evidence.  So in this example, this case study, we see the impact on crime control policy, of ideology, of political ideology, of the need to secure votes, resulting in tax payer’s money being squandered on a failed intervention and political decisions being made in the face of overwhelming evidence that contradicts the political and ideological position.  But it is not only the political class that is guilty of what is best described as Policy-based Evidence, as opposed to evidence-based policy, which can be defined as:

Crime control policy based on the ideological and theoretical bias of the Policy Industry and politicians.

PART II

Strategies for Reducing the Prison Population

In this last section I will set out a number of strategies that will enable Minister Little and his officials to meet their stated target of a 30% reduction in the prison muster.  Because of time constraints they are offered in a very simplistic, largely unevidenced manner; that I admit. They are designed to become part of the general discussion occurring right now,

Depoliticise Crime Control Policy

The first strategy I advocate appears on paper the easiest, but in fact is probably the most difficult to implement: we need to put a stop to the impact of political ideology on our response to social harm. We need to depoliticise crime control policy in much the same way Finland has done.  We need a cross-party agreement to stop the juvenile nonsense we suffer every three years where politicians try to out macho each other to see who can be the 'toughest on crime', resulting in increases in police (with the usual unrealised promises of a reduction in crime), more prison beds, longer sentences, and so forth.  This has been the standard political response to social harm for the best part of three decades: has it made us safer (or, more accurately, to 'feel' safer)?  The answer is no.  The way forward is to develop a policy process based on the needs of community, and one less concerned with the needs of politicians. 

Get Over the Policy Cringe and Empower the Community

Those who work with victims and offenders invariable know what is needed to respond meaningfully to the social issues arising from social harm.  We need the policy sector to work with them more directly (and respectfully) as partners to develop effective, socially grounded solutions.  In order to do so we need to move away from the policy cringe that too often afflicts the Policy Industry in Wellington.  Much like cultural cringe, the policy cringe is based on the erroneous belief that 'things are done better elsewhere', and that successful responses to social harm must be imported from other jurisdictions, usually from jurisdictions with high crime rates!  Go figure.  So we import crime control policies from other jurisdictions, invariable do little to alter them for the New Zealand context, and then place them over the top of community-centred practise... and watch them crash and burn.  the classic example of this process was the importation to New Zealand in the mid-2000s of Multi-Systemic Therapy from the U.S, as` part of the new youth residential programme that was trialed in Hamilton.  Officials from a number of agencies, including Te Puni Kokiri stated serious concerns at the suitability of the programme for Maori youth; concerns that were ignored.  The result?  The programme, and MST especially, was a failure, while at the same time a number of existing home-grown wrap-around, social support programmes for Maori youth, were ignored. 

Treatment and Social Support, not Criminalisation and Imprisonment

There is a simple response that will reduce the prison population quickly and enable Minister Little to meet his 30% objective, stop sending people to prison! 

Stop arresting people, charging them, sending them to court, sentencing them to imprisonment for victimless crimes, like some drug offences.

Stop sending people to prison who are addicted or mentally unwell – increase significantly our reliance and focus on therapeutic jurisprudence.

And here is a suggestion that will likely anger some, perhaps some of you here – recognise the reality we are dealing with regarding our prison muster – a significant number of them are addicted, are mentally unwell, and many have long histories of trauma – of domestic violence, or sexual victimisation.  

To stop them from victimising others, then we need to deal with their trauma, and if you want evidence of the sorts of victimisation and trauma that some of our past and present prison muster are dealing with, then I recommend you read Dr Liz Stanley’s 2016 publication The Road to Hell: State Violence Against Children in Postwar New Zealand.

Alluding to the trauma suffered by offenders is unpopular for some people, and inevitably results in statements that 'you are making excuses for serious crime': no, I am not.  I am though highlighting a reality that we need to deal with if we are to create a safer, more just society.  By focusing on their trauma of experienced by offenders I am offering one explanation for their behaviour, and not a reason to ignore the harm they cause others. 

Let Us In!

The crime control sector needs to let go, it needs to grow up, it needs to stop being so risk adverse, and allow independent researchers like myself and others to undertake critical, independent research.

The principal crime control agencies have for some time now been making it very difficult for independent, critical researchers to scrutinise the performance of the ‘system’.

Oh, I know they will be able to cite a few examples since 2001 where they have allowed PhD students or other researchers 'in' to prisons to do research, for example... research that is likely contracted by the agency or heavily vetted to ensure it serves the needs of the agency, and is unlikely to result in critical findings that might embarrass Corrections, or Police, or Justice, or worse, their Minister.

I am talking about the strategy that the sector appears to be following the past few years of blocking critical research that does not suit agency needs.  And it is blocking independent researchers from going about their business, by using excuses like 'the information that will be gathered doesn't match with our trending data' or with 'our strategic priorities', or some similar nonsense.  And if that fails Corrections and others can fall back on well-worn excuses such as potential 'safety' issues for both inmates and researchers, or muster issues or whatever else they can think of.  

And yet other jurisdictions, most notably the United Kingdom, have in the past had few issues with allowing researchers to enter prisons to carry out their work. The evidence for this is the significant amount (comparatively speaking) of independent research materials published in academic journals on prisons and corrections policies in that and other comparable jurisdictions.  The problem in the New Zealand context seems to grow from the intersection- a dangerous combination - of three factors: 1) a policy elite who appear to believe themselves above critique, 2) a policy elite who believe they are not answerable to the public, and 3) who are supported by a political elite who share the same arrogance and aversion to independent scrutiny.  

Let me be even more frank, policy workers and government agencies do not always have the answers and, more importantly because they are so close to their own work they often can't see the wood for the trees.  In other words it is sometimes very difficult for them to step back and critically analysis the impact or their work or identify the questions that need to be asked and answered by research.  Sometimes the questions and topics 'the community', which includes independent researchers, inmates, ex-inmates, inmates and ex-inmates families, victims and service providers, believe are important will not match those of the policy sector; and sometimes the communities questions are the right ones to be asking. Remember, a government agency is part of the public service and derives its resources from the public purse.  Therefore, it is time for policy practitioners to stop acting as though they are not answerable to the public.

Bias and Racism

And lastly, specifically on the issue of Maori over-representation in the criminal justice system:

In answer to the oft-heard statement that we Maori should step up and take responsibility of the offending and victimisation that occurs in our communities:

Yes we should, and we already are: from time to time we hear this comment from social commentators, shock jocks and the like, such as Mike Hoskins, Paul Henry, you know when some shocking incident takes place and invariably we hear ‘where are the Maori leaders?  Why aren’t they saying anything?  Why aren’t Maori doing anything, etc, etc.  The ready answer is a) is because they are busy doing the mahi (work), b) you (shock jocks and the like) are not exactly that important to us in terms of reporting what we are doing, c) such commentators appear to never go and find out for themselves what we are doing. I’ve not once heard of them going to say Te Whakaruruhau, Maori women’s refuge in Hamilton to look at their anti-violence work with Maori men in Waikeria Prison, or the numerous other Maori-run entities working with youth and adult offenders and victims, often with far less government financial support per client than mainstream service providers.  Such comments are therefore, uninformed and biased.

If you want us to do more then get out of our way: stop putting policy and financial barriers in  our way to developing more effective interventions for our own.  And while you are doing that, do something about the racism and bias that exists in both the frontline crime control agencies and also in the policy sector.  The claim by the Police Commissioner that there is no racism in police, only that some officers have ‘unconscious bias’ is nothing more than a political ruse designed to ignore the truth of racism within the force.  The existence of racism and bias in police and other criminal justice institutions in other western jurisdictions is well-evidenced, jurisdictions by the way that we regularly compare ourselves to.  What makes the Commissioner and his supporters believe our force is any different?  Perhaps it is because they continue to believe in the myth of New Zealand having the best race relations in the world?  Bias does exist in our system, and despite the best attempts to block independent research that I spoke of earlier, we do have empirical evidence that demonstrates this, starting with Moana Jackson’s 1988 report, 2 MRL attitudinal surveys in the 1990s, Roguski and Te Whaiti’s Police Perceptions of Maori research published in 2000.

If we Maori are to take up the challenge to do more, as we should, then just as importantly, crime control institutions and the policy sector in New Zealand need to be more open and honest about the bias and racism that exists in our institutions and do something concrete about these issues.  And if they do, perhaps then, together, we can change the landscape of criminal justice in this country, and Minister Little can not only meet his 30% target, one that becomes sustainable over time.