Decolonizing The Criminal Question

Within the discipline of criminology and criminal justice, relatively little attention has been paid to the relationship between criminal law, punishment, and imperialism, or the contours and exercise of penal power in the Global South. Decolonizing the Criminal Question is the first work of its kind to comprehensively place colonialism and its legacies at the heart of criminological enquiry. By examining the reverberations of colonial history and logics in the operation of penal power, this volume explores the uneasy relationship between criminal justice and colonialism, bringing relevance of these legacies in criminological enquiries to the forefront of the discussion. It invites and pursues a better understanding of the links between imperialism and colonialism on the one hand, and nationalism and globalisation on the other, by exposing the imprints of these links on processes of marginalisation, racialisation, and exclusion that are central to contemporary criminal justice practices. Covering a range of jurisdictions and themes, Decolonizing the Criminal Question details how colonial and imperial domination relied on the internalization of hierarchies and identities -- for example, racial, geographical, and geopolitical -- of both the colonized and the colonizer, and shaped their subjectivity through imageries, discourses, and technologies. Offering innovative, conceptual, and methodological approaches to the study of the criminal question, this work is an essential read for scholars not only focused on criminology and criminal justice, but also for scholars in law, anthropology, sociology, politics, history, and a range of other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Decolonizing the Criminal Question is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Within the discipline of criminology and criminal justice, relatively little attention has been paid to the relationship between criminal law, punishment, and imperialism, or the contours and exercise of penal power in the Global South. Decolonizing the Criminal Question is the first work of its kind to comprehensively place colonialism and its legacies at the heart of criminological enquiry. By examining the reverberations of colonial history and logics in the operation of penal power, this volume explores the uneasy relationship between criminal justice and colonialism, bringing relevance of these legacies in criminological enquiries to the forefront of the discussion. It invites and pursues a better understanding of the links between imperialism and colonialism on the one hand, and nationalism and globalization on the other, by exposing the imprints of these links on processes of marginalization, racialization, and exclusion that are central to contemporary criminal justice practices. Covering a range of jurisdictions and themes, Decolonizing the Criminal Question details how colonial and imperial domination relied on the internalization of hierarchies and identities — for example, racial, geographical, and geopolitical — of both the colonized and the colonizer, and shaped their subjectivity through imageries, discourses, and technologies. Offering innovative, conceptual, and methodological approaches to the study of the criminal question, this work is an essential read for scholars not only focused on criminology and criminal justice, but also for scholars in law, anthropology, sociology, politics, history, and a range of other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Decolonizing the Criminal Question is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to download from OUP and selected open access locations.

This book undertakes an exploratory exercise in decolonizing criminology through engaging postcolonial and postdisciplinary perspectives and methodologies. Through its historical and political analysis and place-based case studies, it challenges criminological inquiry by installing colonial structures of power at the centre of the contemporary criminological debate. This work unseats the Western nation-state as the singular point of departure for comparative criminological and socio-legal research. Decolonising Criminology argues that postcolonial and postdisciplinary critique can open up new pathways for criminological investigation. It builds on recent debates in criminology from outside of the Anglosphere. The authors deploy a number of heuristic devices, perspectives and theories generally ignored by criminologists of the Global North and engage perspectives concerned with articulating new decolonised epistemologies of the Global South. This book disputes the view that colonisation is a thing of the past and provides lessons for the Global North.

The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice focuses on the growing worldwide movement aimed at decolonizing state policies and practices, and various disciplinary knowledges including criminology, social work and law. The collection of original chapters brings together cutting-edge, politically engaged work from a diverse group of writers who take as a starting point an analysis founded in a decolonizing, decolonial and/or Indigenous standpoint. Centering the perspectives of Black, First Nations and other racialized and minoritized peoples, the book makes an internationally significant contribution to the literature. The chapters include analyses of specific decolonization policies and interventions instigated by communities to enhance jurisdictional self-determination; theoretical approaches to decolonization; the importance of research and research ethics as a key foundation of the decolonization process; crucial contemporary issues including deaths in custody, state crime, reparations, and transitional justice; and critical analysis of key institutions of control, including police, courts, corrections, child protection systems and other forms of carcerality. The handbook is divided into five sections which reflect the breadth of the decolonizing literature: • Why decolonization? From the personal to the global • State terror and violence • Abolishing the carceral • Transforming and decolonizing justice • Disrupting epistemic violence This book offers a comprehensive and timely resource for activists, students, academics, and those with an interest in Indigenous studies, decolonial and post-colonial studies, criminal legal institutions and criminology. It provides critical commentary and analyses of the major issues for enhancing social justice internationally. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book critically examines the colonial dimensions of restorative justice through the lens of justice policy reform in Jamaica. Restorative justice is not new. Practices of restitution can be found throughout history, predominantly in non-Western traditions and religions. One of the key principles of restorative practices is contextualisation. That is, restorative practices are developed and embedded within the political, economic, and cultural context of the communities in which they are practised. Many of the countries that have gone on to develop restorative justice as part of their formal justice system have developed their policy on the model of their indigenous communities – for example, in Canada and in New Zealand. However, with the globalisation of restorative practices within the past decade, many countries have sought to ‘colonise’ restorative justice, by developing a standardised, best-practice approach. Instead of a practice that is developed and formed by its community, colonised restorative justice dictates that one size fits all. Examined through the lens of the development and implementation of restorative justice policies in Jamaica, this book argues that this Westernised approach diminishes the effectiveness of restorative justice in its capacity: to address the victim’s needs; to hold the offender accountable in a way that reintegrates them into society; and to empower the community by involving them in the provision of justice to victims. Restorative justice, then, must be decolonised –and local, indigenous practices acknowledged –if it is to achieve its aims. This book will be of interest to a range of scholars with interests in decolonisation, as well as alternative dispute resolution, especially those in sociolegal studies, criminology, human rights, social policy, political science, and Caribbean studies.

Punishment, Probation and Parole brings together leading scholars to explore the various dimensions and emerging concepts of community-based penalties and models for their future.

This book analyses a selection of leading works in the criminal law to ask questions about how the modern discipline of criminal law has developed, how it has been deployed in colonial and postcolonial contexts, and how criminal law scholarship has engaged with traditionally marginalised perspectives such as feminism, queer theory, and anti-carceral and abolitionist movements. The works analysed range from Macaulay’s Indian Penal Code (1837) to more recent textbooks and monographs on criminal law, and their jurisdictional reach extends to India, Canada, Australia, Malawi, the UK and the USA. The contributing authors include scholars, activists and legal practitioners, each of whom explores the intellectual development and geographical reach of Anglocriminal law via the work they analyse. Across the collection, the editors and contributors address the question of what it means to be a leading work in criminal law. The book will be a valuable resource for students, academics and researchers working in the area of criminal law.

There is powerful evidence that the colonization of Indigenous people was and is a crime, and that that crime is on-going. In this book Nielsen and Robyn present an analysis of the relationship between these colonial crimes and their continuing criminal and socially injurious consequences that exist today.