Racialized Correctional Governance: The Mutual Constructions of Race and Criminal Justice

197 Pages·2013·1.022 MB·English

by  Claire Spivakovsky

Racialized coRRectional GoveRnance
Racialized correctional Governance provides a thought-provoking analysis of the
way correctional policies and practices construct racialized identities. The book
traces how older notions of racial inferiority are combined with new technologies
of risk and anti-social behaviour to produce a discourse of racialized peoples as
criminal populations. The author challenges criminologists to engage in a new
way of thinking about race and criminal justice.
chris cunneen, James cook University, australia
advances in criminology
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Racialized correctional
Governance
the Mutual constructions of Race and criminal Justice
claiRe SPivakovSky
Monash University, Australia
© claire Spivakovsky 2013
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
claire Spivakovsky has asserted her right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Spivakovsky, claire.
Racialized correctional governance : the mutual
constructions of race and criminal justice. -- (advances in
criminology)
1. discrimination in criminal justice administration.
2. Racism in criminology. 3. equality before the law.
4. Minorities--legal status, laws, etc. 5. indigenous
peoples--legal status, laws, etc.
i. title ii. Series
364'.089-dc23
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows
Spivakovsky, claire.
Racialized correctional governance : the mutual constructions of race and criminal justice / by
claire Spivakovsky.
pages cm. -- (advances in criminology)
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-1-4094-3751-2 (hardback) -- iSBn 978-1-4094-3752-9 (ebook) -- iSBn 978-1-4094-
8468-4 (epub) 1. discrimination in criminal justice administration. 2. corrections--Moral and
ethical aspects. 3. Racism. 4. criminal justice, administration of--Moral and ethical aspects. i.
title.
Hv7419.S65 2013
365.089--dc23
2013003624
iSBn 9781409437512 (hbk)
iSBn 9781409437529 (ebk – PdF)
iSBn 9781409484684 (ebk – ePUB)
IV
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1 The ‘Infallible Science’ of Offending Behaviour 15
2 The Rules of Engagement 39
3 Unavoidable and Undeniable History 65
4 Biculturalism: Struggling to Maintain Dual Histories 99
5 Diverse History, Common Practice 123
Conclusion 151
References 161
Index 177
This page has been left blank intentionally
Preface
I want to begin this preface with a brief disclaimer. This preface focuses on
the personal and challenging experiences that inspired and shaped the content,
orientation, arguments and conclusions of this book. There is therefore potential
for this preface to turn into an indulgent and existential discussion about me, the
author. This is not my intention. I share these personal and challenging experiences
with you, the reader, not simply because they indicate how and why this particular
book emerged, but also to invite you to consider how criminology is shaped by the
experiences of its scholars.
This book is first and foremost inspired by my experiences in producing
criminology. In employing the term ‘producing’ I refer to two things. First, the
content of this book is based on a research project I completed at the University
of Melbourne in the late 2000s. The research explored how correctional agencies
in the state of Victoria, Australia, and New Zealand approach the offender
rehabilitation principle of responsivity in relation to their Indigenous offender
populations – what has now become the focus of Chapter 5.
While the focus and content of the project has been significantly transformed
in the development of this book, it was only in its production that I began to think
about issues of race and criminal justice in a different way. In particular, it was
only by thinking about the way correctional agencies engage with the experiences
of Indigenous populations as an afterthought or an add-on component to a program
when creating and implementing criminal justice practice that drew my attention
to the fundamental focus of this book: criminology’s problematic treatment of
issues of race and criminal justice, and the implications for the way the discipline
creates racialized practices and works with racialized peoples. However, it was not
the content of the research project that inspired me to write this book. Rather, it
was my experiences in producing and delivering conference papers.
Over the past seven years I have presented papers at a variety of criminology and
criminal justice conferences. My papers have focused on the use of specific penal
tools by criminal justice practitioners, the spaces and orientation of criminal justice
systems, the experiences of Indigenous criminal justice staff, and a broad range
of other criminal justice issues. Yet regardless of what issue I chose to present at a
conference, I encountered the same frustrating problem in the majority I attended.
That is, if your conference paper addresses a ‘racialized’ issue, and by this I mean,
if your conference abstract, title or paper mentions a racialized population in any
context, the majority of conference convenors will allocate your conference paper
to the Indigenous justice, ethnicity, race, or marginalization conference stream.
You are put in this stream regardless of whether your paper is about police, courts,
viii Racialized Correctional Governance
corrections, criminal justice, primary prevention, victimology, reintegration or any
other aspect of criminology.
While grouping conference papers that address ‘racialized’ issues is a seemingly
logical decision, the reality of the situation is far more complex. Confining my
conference papers to the Indigenous justice or ethnicity and race streams meant
that I was often the only speaker in the session who would present a paper about
penal issues, and that my paper would be presented alongside the only speaker
addressing a policing issue, and the only speaker addressing a community or
primary prevention issue.
The lack of synergy between our papers was both frustrating and problematic.
Unable to find any common threads between our papers other than their engagement
with some form of racialized issues, audience members would inevitably respond
to our papers in one of two problematic ways. First, an audience member would
say, ‘this question is for all the speakers, each of your papers show that Indigenous
people have problems in the criminal justice system, what do you think is the
solution?’ Thus conflating all the issues from the various subject matters presented.
Second, another audience member would inevitably tell the speakers about an
unrelated racialized issue in their life and ask for a response. For example, at the
last criminology conference I attended, a white male informed us his daughter
had married an Aboriginal man a few years back and that their children seemed
to be struggling at school as a result of their ‘mixed’ heritage. The man wanted
to know if we thought his grandchildren’s educational problems were related to
our discussions of Aboriginal peoples’ over-representation in the criminal justice
system and, of course, what we thought the solution was.
By placing any criminologist who mentions a racialized population as part
of their discussion on penal tools, sentencing, primary prevention or any other
diverse criminological topic in the same stream, conference convenors ensure that
the actual content of the paper fails to be transferred to the audience members (as
is evident in the type of questions elicited from audience members). Moreover,
what is transferred is something very different and unintended: an impression that
racialized peoples regularly have problems with the criminal justice system and
that the problem resides in these peoples’ racialized identity.
These repeated experiences have frustrated me immensely. However, they
have also inspired me. They have inspired me to think about the different ways
criminologists develop their understanding about a topic of interest. They have
made me think about the impact on criminologists’ understanding of criminal
justice issues if papers like mine only ever appear in the race/ethnicity stream
of conferences because of their racialized content. Finally, they have made me
think about what it means for criminologists’ understanding of racialized peoples’
experiences if papers like mine are repeatedly met with the same sort of audience
response. It is the result of these experiences of producing criminology that have
inspired the development of this book.
Claire Spivakovsky,
November 2012
Acknowledgements
This book is based on a large research project which I completed at the University
of Melbourne, and I owe a deep debt of gratitude to a number of people who
were involved in its completion. In particular I am grateful to Mark Brown. As a
supervisor, Mark not only challenged me to go one step further with my analysis,
but also provided me the space to independently determine how to take that step,
and how to interpret what I found when I arrived. I have used the research skills I
gained from Mark’s challenges throughout the development of this book. I am also
thankful to have shared my time at the University of Melbourne with a number of
people who have become good friends along the way. In particular, I am thankful
for the unwavering support of Simone Gristwood, the advice and editorial skills
of Beejay Silcox and the encouragement of Emma Colvin and Rebecca Hiscock.
I am indebted to the members of staff at the Victorian Department of Justice
and the New Zealand Department of Corrections. As this book details, these
individuals not only sit at the frontline of contemporary penal practice but also
negotiate its operation. I am indebted to these individuals for finding time within
their demanding jobs to answer my questions about Indigenous offenders and
correctional practice. This book would not have been possible without their words
and explanations.
I am grateful to those who have reviewed my work over the years. In particular I
am grateful to Kelly Hannah-Moffat, who examined the initial project and provided
an engaging and thought provoking examination report. This report enabled me to
see how a study about two small jurisdictions in the southern hemisphere may
hold greater relevance for criminology’s understanding of race and punishment in
general. I am also grateful for the expertise of Ashgate Publishing, and in particular
for the insightful comments of the anonymous reviewers who challenged me to
write a more ambitious book than originally proposed.
While completing this book I have had the opportunity to work in a number
of positions in academia, and the community and government sectors. Each of
these positions has provided me with new perspectives on what it means to be a
criminologist, to produce criminology and to work with criminology’s products.
There are a number of individuals across these workplaces that I would like to
thank for their support over the years. In particular, I thank Sophie Goldingay, Tina
Murphy, Tanya King and Joanna Cruickshank of Deakin University, Australia;
Sarah Spencer, Kelly Warner and Charles Levy of the Australian Community
Support Organisation; Magdalena McGuire and Lois Bedson of the Office of