"The Impossibility of Communitarian Justice whilst there is Intervention." (original) (raw)

Crime as governance: towards a 21st century criminology (2004)

As we enter the twenty-first century we need a new understanding of crime adequate to the new conditions in which we live. If we are to avoid the continual marginalisation of criminology we must be aware that the development of our discipline was based on particular historical conditions which are fast changing beyond recognition. Traditionally, criminology, echoing criminal law, presupposed a view of crime as • An exceptional event rather than a normally expected occurrence • A form of pathology, originating from and overwhelmingly located in, the marginalised periphery of society • An episodic, and frequently brutal, disruption of otherwise normal socioeconomic processes. • An object, or target, of governance. Criminality is a phenomena to be regulated and reduced to manageable proportions by the resources at the disposal of the modern state and other social institutions. The role of criminology is to assist in this process of management and control.

A Shifting and Convoluted Paradigm in the Regime of Crime Control, Due Process and Penal Justice

Journal of Law, Policy and Globalization, 2019

The well-known criminal justice constituencies of crime control, due process and penal sentence are facing far reaching transformations resulting in some paradoxical outcomes that include an upsurge in populist legislations and the emergence of non-state actors in justice administration. Although these may be reflections of criminal justice’s attempt to enhance effectiveness, the outcome has been severely convoluted that the question of rights and even the foundation of theory of social contract are waning into the shadows of bureaucratic policies and practices that seemed to threaten the fabric of justice administration. This paper is an attempt to show how criminal justice policies and strategies are gravitating from their orthodox constituency to a territory that is mixed in populism, punitivism as well as the compounded regime of coalitions of public and private actors defined mostly by contentious new practices of crime control, procedural changes and an economic way of thinkin...

2004- ‘Criminogenic Need and the Transformative Risk Subject: Hybridizations of Risk/Need in Penality.’ Punishment and Society. 7 (1): 29-51.

The increasing 'diversity' of penal populations in most western countries over the past three decades raises questions as to the fairness and appropriateness of established penal programmes and practices. In some jurisdictions, penal policy-makers and administrators are being forced to deal with the implications of offender diversities, including race, ethnicity, gender, culture and religion, in policy and planning. In Canada, the pervasive over-representation of Aboriginal individuals in prisons has led to calls for change in how the corrections and parole systems deal with Aboriginal prisoners. This article examines the advent of one 'culturally appropriate' adaptation of the parole process, the Elder assisted hearing, introduced in 1992 by the Parole Board of Canada as a means of (1) addressing the problem of over-representation and (2) being responsive to Aboriginal difference. It shows that the 'Aboriginalisation' of parole hearing formats is by no means a straightforward process, and is illustrative of the broader challenges that racial, cultural and gender differences pose to contemporary penality.

‘Crime and Indigenous People’

Handbook of Australian Criminology, Cambridge University Press: Melbourne, pp 256-280., 2002

Theories of crime applied to explain the over-representation of Indigenous people in the penal system are re-examined by three approaches to Indigenous–governmental relations in post-colonial Australia: Aboriginalism, Welfare Colonialism, and Institutionalism. The colonisation of ‘wild’ country, especially in ‘frontier’ states, and relentless ‘civilising’ has continued to imperil and restructure the Indigenous domain. Modernisation disrupts Indigenous society, nurtures cultural resistance, provokes pathologies in the survivors and conflict at cross-borders. High levels of culture-conflict and stress are reflected in the extremes found in the penal system’s response. Indigenous people’s encounter with post-colonial governments is shaped by the problematic deployment of police and penal institutions in managing ‘self-determination’ and has inspired both new (restorative) and old ‘recovered’ (preventive detention) forms of penal sanction – punishments that exemplify the ambivalence of Indigenous citizenship and the problems of regulating social order in post-colonial settler states.

An Introduction to Crime & Punishment

Coolabah, 2021

Few scholars of Australian history need reminding that Colonial Australia began as a British prison. The detrimental effect these origins had, and arguably still have, on Indigenous Australia is unambiguous. The extent to which this brutal background shaped the modern nation merits re-evaluation. In this issue of Coolabah, we aim to extrapolate and explore the links stretching from the First Fleet, and assess how much of a role this past plays in the building of the modern Australian nation.