Critical Indigenous Criminology in Practice and Praxis

Abstract

Criminologists and policy makers often acknowledge the over-representation of Indigenous peoples in criminal legal systems as one of the significant issues facing the discipline and the policy sector. However, legislation, policies and interventions targeting this issue are too often based on theoretical and analytical frameworks that reify the individual as the focus of intercession, pathologise Indigenous peoples, and/or criminalise Indigenous cultural beliefs and practices. In this article we aim to provide an alternative to the criminalising tendencies of mainstream criminology by demonstrating the efficacy of Critical Indigenous Criminology to explaining and responding to Indigenous-centered issues. We contend that a critical Indigenous criminological approach contains several core conceptual and practice principles that distinguish it from ‘the mainstream’, components we believe empower practitioners to speak directly to Indigenous experiences, which in turn enables them to effectively support Indigenous self-determination. These include the privileging of Indigenous knowledge, methodologies, and experience, centering the colonial project within one’s theoretical and analytical framework, and privileging Indigenous voices and experience within the evolving decolonisation project, amongst others. We seek to demonstrate the value and importance of a Critical Indigenous Criminology by utilising the approach to analyse three criminological issues: violence against women and the importation of all-women police stations as a response to gender violence, the continued (over) reliance of the policy sector and administrative criminologists of ‘risk thinking’ and comparing state-centered rehabilitation with Indigenous responses to social harm that focus on the concept of healing.