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

197 Pages·2013·1.022 MB·English
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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 Series Editor: David Nelken Recent titles in the series transitional Justice images and Memories Edited by Chrisje Brants, Antoine Hol and Dina Siegel the arts of imprisonment control, Resistance and empowerment Edited by Leonidas K. Cheliotis the Hidden order of corruption an institutional approach Donatella della Porta and Alberto Vannucci comparative criminal Justice and Globalization Edited by David Nelken Racial criminalization of Migrants in the 21st century Edited by Salvatore Palidda Pervasive Prevention a Feminist Reading of the Rise of the Security Society Tamar Pitch children’s Rights and the Minimum age of criminal Responsibility a Global Perspective Don Cipriani Hate on the net extremist Sites, neo-fascism on-line, electronic Jihad Antonio Roversi decisions to imprison: court decision-Making inside and outside the law Rasmus H. Wandall the Policing of transnational Protest Edited by Donatella della Porta, Abby Peterson and Herbert Reiter The full list of series titles can be found at the back of the book. 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 ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company Wey court east 110 cherry Street Union Road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, vt 05401-3818 Surrey, GU9 7Pt USa england www.ashgate.com 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

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