Challenging the Neo-Liberal Academy and the Bigotry of Australasian Criminology

The following blog provides the full text of my plenary presentation at the recent Social Movement, Resistance and Social Change conference held at Massey University, Albany Campus, Auckland 6-8 September 2017

Introduction

At the beginning of the 20^th century, the African American scholar and researcher, Du Bois stated that the most significant problem that the fledgling social sciences would have to contend with throughout the coming century was the colour-line. By the term colour-line, Du Bois was referring to the state of relations between white and black, between Black American’s and the institutions that support white privilege and white supremacy, including the criminal justice system. Du Bois’ statement was not simply an attempt at far-sighted prediction, but a call to arms for social scientists and researchers to focus their collective efforts on the continued subjugation of Black Americans in the U.S. One could argue that a similar focus was necessary in the Settler-Colonial jurisdictions of New Zealand and Australia, herein referred to as ‘Australasia’.

Now let us leap forward in time, to 2010, where we find the Nigerian criminologist Biko Agozino, forcefully arguing that the discipline of criminology is a control freak, a white privilege-dominated social control fanatic whose epistemological foundations were laid during the colonialisation of Africa, North America and the Pacific, a history that provides the basis for understanding the disciplines continued role in Indigenous subjugation. It will come as no surprise to some of you to hear me say that I am in total agreement with Biko on this issue, as the discipline has long approached Indigenous peoples as problem populations in need of significant social management through:

• targeted surveillance (especially through racialised policing);
• geographical containment (in reservations and boarding schools to begin with, and of late via the prison industrial complex of late modernity); and
• ‘correction’ through a liberal dose of the gift of western knowledge, usually in the form of psycho-therapeutic programmes and other, similar Eurocentric interventions. 

I have two objectives today: Firstly: to reveal the colonial foundations of the discipline of criminology, a fact, a ‘happening’ about which most of its disciples appear ignorant of, or choose the comfort of collective amnesia, a convenient forgetfulness that allows them to portray themselves as ‘objective’ commentators on the Indigenous issues. Secondly: I will argue that the discipline of criminology has indeed become a control freak, with many of its adherents working tirelessly, and with prejudice to protect their hegemony over the production of what their key sponsor, the settler-colonial state defines as  ‘legitimate knowledge’ about crime and crime control, most especially in relation to the ‘Indigenous problem’. I will endeavour to reveal the disciplines control freak tendencies by employing Agamben’s theory of the State of Exception to critically analyse the role the discipline of criminology plays in this process, with reference to what I call the Three Pillars of Exception and Exclusion in Australasian Criminology. But first I want to make some comments about the colonial foundations of the discipline of criminology.

A Comment on the Colonial Foundations of Criminology

It is a well-worn refrain of historians, and some social scientists, that in order to understand the present you need to understand the past. And so it is with attempting to ‘know’ why a community of scholars, in this case criminologists, conduct themselves in certain ways today. Harry Blagg, Biko Agozino, Chris Cunneen, amongst others, have drawn attention to the historical connections between the development of criminology and criminal justice in the  and 19^th and early 20^th century centuries, and the inter-related projects of colonialism and Western imperialism. And yet, despite all this critical analysis, Australasian criminologists generally operate without a theory of colonialism and its effects on Indigenous peoples, most especially the not insignificant, growing group of non-Indigenous criminologists specialising in what they call ‘Indigenous justice’. 

Biko Agozino, in his 2003 book Counter Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason, demonstrates how the developing disciplines of criminology and psychology trialled their theories and related social and control policies and interventions, on the dispossessed and suppressed First Peoples of Africa, before taking what they learnt and refining them for use on the social damned of Europe, the poor, the travellers, Jewish communities, to name but a few. The lack of awareness of, or willingness to confront its colonial past, is a fundamental weakness of neoliberal ‘mainstream’ criminology; a weakness that makes many of its adherents blind to the intersectional drivers of contemporary Indigenous over-representation.

Especially concerning for those of us working in the field of Indigenous justice, is that ‘Western’ criminology appears to be largely immune to the pleadings of Agozino, Cunneen and others, that it extricate itself from yet another related blind spot that many of its adherents suffer from; namely its role as a Colonial Project that supports the Settler-Colonial states continued subjugation of Indigenous people. As the saying goes, people who ignore the lessons of the past are bound to repeat them. Although of course, that refrain is predicated on a belief that people in general and the Settler-Colonial state and white privileged criminologists specifically, are capable of recognising that their failed policies, legislation, interventions, even theories, as ‘mistakes’, as being the cause, partial or wholly, of social injustice, dispossession, social exclusion, and genocide. I contend that deep down, in their quiet, contemplative moments, many Australasian criminologists are well aware that they and their discipline ‘wear no clothes’. I also believe that upon focused, critical self-reflection, their complicity in the subjugation of Indigenous people, is, or will be exposed, which is probably why most of them show an aversion to researching it, acknowledging it, or  attempt to understand it.

This now brings me to the last part of my presentation; the exposure of the rapacious, prejudiced and subjugating tendencies of Australasian criminology; a discipline, as I pointed out earlier, that is very  much in the service of the Settler-Colonial state.

The Three Pillars of Exception and Exclusion in Australasian Criminology

What is now apparent is the capacity of contemporary criminology, in partnership with the Settler-Colonial state to blatantly sideline and silence Indigenous peoples. It is most especially skilled in silencing our experiences of contemporary crime control, and pushing genocidal crime control policies, legislation and interventions upon us, despite overwhelming evidence of their failure, by any measure, to reduce recidivism, or make our communities safer.

I contend that this places us in a state of exception to mainstream criminology and given, their parasitic relationship, to the Settler-Colonial states of New Zealand and Australia. Tactics of active exclusion can be purposely formed, as in having a clearly stated intention to exclude, such as the Northern Territory Emergency Response that was introduced by the Howard government in 2007. Or, it can be subtle, with intentions hidden among the meaningless rhetoric employed by the professional academic concerned to protect their social justice credentials. Exceptional measures of exclusion permeate the discipline of criminology’s relationship with Indigenous peoples; and why would they not, given the historical development of the discipline and its relationship with the state.

My argument that we are in a ‘state of exception’ to Settler-Colonial criminology comes from Agamben’s theory of the same, a process whereby the modern democratic state exclude certain groups from the space within which the advantages of citizenship, including human rights, are present. Furthermore, those in the state of exception, thus excluded, receive the legitimate forms of violence available to the modern democratic state – including I would argue, the violence that is the criminal justice system.

This violence manifests in many forms: social, political, economic and (not always but sometimes) geographic exclusions, denial of citizenship rights, refusal to engage with people in order to meaningfully include their perspectives and experience in the development of policy and initiatives, the homogenisation and stereotyping of individuals, and at times entire communities. Other manifestations include the development of policies for them as a separate group based on Eurocentric formulations, wielded upon the bodies of Indigenous peoples by agents of the sovereign state.

Hold a mirror up to academic, Australasian criminology and you will see many, if not all of these strategies deployed by many of its practitioners against Indigenous peoples. It is my contention that criminology, as a Colonial Project in support of the Settler-Colonial state, has throughout its history created Indigenous peoples as a problem population, a criminalised population, in need of significant surveillance and control. We are, for all intent and purposes, placed in a state of exception, ear-marked for exclusion, and by that I mean excluded from meaningful input into the policy context by both the policy industry and the criminologists that further their careers by sucking on the funding teat of the state. 

Many of us excluded from the mainstream, and from the development of criminological knowledge because of the colours we choose to wear, because we belong to hard-to-reach communities (as Harry Tam refers to them, or 'gangs' in the policy and criminological lexicon), communities that many Australasian criminologists talk about, without ever having engaged with them. We are also excluded by dent of our significant involvement in the criminal justice system, and other social suppression processes such as child care and protection; governmental processes that criminologist played significant roles in developing.  

Our state of exception does not manifest through the amount of attention we receive from the either criminology or the institutions of crime control, but because of the nature and form of the surveillance and the absence of meaningful, respectful and empowering engagement. Because of our ‘state of exception’ the same rules that govern respectful dialogue and engagement with say the white middle class, are not extended to us - hardly surprising given that the vast majority of Australasian criminologists are white and middle class. We are exceptional in that crime control practitioners and white privileged criminologists do not see the need to conduct themselves ethically and respectfully towards us, as they would their own. And yet while they claim to specialise in Indigenous justice, few bother to even try to develop policies and interventions that support Indigenous self-determination. 

This now brings me to a discussion of the three pillars of exception and exclusion within Australasian criminology:

The First Pillar: The Lack of Respect and Regard for Indigenous Ways of Being

Many of the disciplines’ practitioners work tirelessly to silence the Indigenous experience, and the Indigenous critique, both of the discipline, and of the partner to which it has a parasitic relationship, the criminal justice system. I will go further and argue that the silencing of the Indigenous voice is a prerequisite for gaining entry into the policy and legislative functions of neo-liberal government. If you want a seat at the table and for your research to be accepted as valid, the experiences of the subjugated, those who are critical of government performance most especially, or who have or are resisting state hegemony, must either be expunged, or at the very least modulated to the point that the lived experience of bias, racism and subjugation is rendered mute. Replaced instead with facile, meaningless research summaries drawn from glorified, state-sanctioned customer satisfaction surveys.

If we had more time we could fill a whole plenary session with a discussion of the methods criminologists employs to ‘know us’, and what they consider to be valid forms of knowledge construction and dissemination. In the Indigenous context, all too often criminologists conduct research on Indigenous issues while proselytising from afar, utilising, for example, highly structured surveys, statistical modelling, and such like, whilst rarely (sometimes never) descending into the Indigenous space to engage with us face-to-face.

The Second Pillar: The Banality of Academic Criminological Racism and Bias

In a thought-provoking piece on the support her discipline gave to the colonial context, Wendy James referred to anthropologists as ‘reluctant imperialists’, meaning that their support for the colonising enterprise was largely unplanned or unintentional. Arguably, in seeking to ‘do good’ by Indigenous peoples, anthropologists inadvertently provided empirical support to the colonial enterprise of dispossession.  

I am reluctant to offer many criminologists the same benefit of the doubt: for example, what are we to make of the continued control-freak tendencies of Australasian criminology, especially its more authoritarian adaptations? Far too often the criminological focus remains on the individual native; an individual divorced from their social, historical and structural context, as is often the case in the work of adherents who dismiss the validity of Indigenous forms of knowledge. For an example of this bias, let us contemplate for a moment how it came to be that Don Weatherburn, in a book on Aboriginal imprisonment published in 2014, felt empowered enough to argue that all we needed to know about crime, we could receive from Western science, and by inference that Indigenous ‘knowledge’ has little to offer for an understanding of social harm.  

This type of action cannot, should not be easily dismissed as 'accidental', unintentional incidents of cultural imperialism ala James’ defence of anthropology. And Weatherburn’s attitude is one that is commonly held by white privileged, Australasian criminologists. It is in my experience common place; it is insidious, and it is a reflection of the casual nature of the cultural imperialism that exists in the criminological academy in both jurisdictions.

The Third Pillar: The Criminalisation of Indigenous Women, Men and Culture

One often repeated claim is that the criminological attention has moved too far from individual ‘pathology’, to the crime control institutions of the Settler-Colonial state, and the effects of colonial and neo-colonial policy. As a result, this shift in analysis has resulted in ineffective policies and interventions for reducing Indigenous over-representation. The recommended solution should  come as no surprise: we must return the criminological gaze firmly back to the much neglected Aboriginal, pathological individual, dysfunctional family unit, and for the likes of Don Weatherburn in Australia, and here in the New Zealand context, that well-researched expert on the Maori condition, Greg Newbold, firmly back to the criminalising cultures of the Aboriginal peoples and Maori people. Similarly, Danette Marie, in her commentary on the New Zealand situation published in a special edition of the Australian New Zealand Journal of Criminology in 2010, blames the inability of the justice system to solve the ‘Indigenous problem,’ on ‘critical liberals’ like myself, whose efforts have apparently ‘not led to more effective measures of crime control within Indigenous communities or to sustained reductions in the rate of criminalisation and incarceration’. 

Now, one would suppose from this description of Indigenous experiences of Australasian crime control that suddenly prisons were empty and police no longer patrolled Indigenous communities incessantly. You could easily form the impression that Aboriginal/Maori offenders are diverted into adjudication processes dominated by Indigenous peoples, that they receive predominantly non-custodial forms of punishment when sentenced, and if they receive such a sentence, end up serving their sentence in a ‘Indigenous cultural unit’ or in a half-way house. And of course, upon release return to communities that have benefited from the extensive infrastructural, social and economic investment by government. Of course, this is not the situation at all. Yes, unquestionably the actions of the ‘legal-welfare establishment’ has led to the introduction of a range of diversionary policies and strategies, and the introduction of restorative-centred justice processes, Aboriginal Liaison Officers, Iwi Liaison Officers, prison-based cultural units like the Maori Focus Units in New Zealand, and so forth. Yet, despite all of this activity, the impression given by Marie and Weatherburn of the ‘failure’ of liberal policy discourse and the critical focus on structure and institutions is a gross exaggeration. At no time during the period in which Indigenous over-representation has been a significant issue for the Policy Industry (around the early 1980s in both Australia and New Zealand), has the liberal perspective dominated crime control policy in either jurisdiction. Furthermore, if we accept the alternative argument, that in fact the vast majority of crime control spend in Australia and New Zealand since 1980 has been on imported crime control policies and interventions, and not on Indigenous-inspired ones, then where is the evidence that the western, scientific response to the Indigenous problem has significantly reduced Indigenous over-representation, or made us better, or safer?

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.