Can Criminology Decolonise… and Do We Care?
摘要
It has become evident over the past three years that the schism that has long existed between the discipline of criminology and Indigenous scholars has widened significantly. The reason for the situation is complex, with much of it extending from significant differences in defining crime and social harm and how to respond to the phenomena in ways that empower Indigenous peoples, as well as different approaches to ensuring research methodologies, methods, and ethics protocols are grounded in Indigenous epistemologies. And we cannot ignore the impact that the continued support many non-Indigenous criminologists provide to the settler-colonial state continues to have on the relationship between the discipline and Indigenous peoples. Add to this recent personal attacks by white criminologists in Australia against Indigenous feminist scholars for ‘calling out’ continued, disempowering practices, and we appear to have reached the point where the schism may grow so wide that reconciliation is unlikely. With this situation in mind, this chapter will attempt firstly, to outline and evidence the existence of the schism itself, revealing how it came into existence and why. Secondly, highlight contemporary drivers of Indigenous discontent with ‘whitestream’ criminology, utilising the case studies of continued support by some criminologists for state crime control, especially policing, and the malignment of Indigenous scholarship within the development of ‘Southern Criminology’, a supposedly ‘post-colonial turn’ in contemporary criminology. And thirdly, provide a critical Indigenous analysis to the question: ‘can Criminology decolonise’? In this, the last section of the chapter, we will critique current approaches by ‘mainstream’ criminologists to decolonise their discipline and compare their actions to the types of strategies and concrete actions Indigenous scholars and Indigenous communities have been demanding of the discipline for over thirty years.