Blagg, Harry. (2016). Crime, Aboriginality and the Decolonisation of Justice. The Federation Press.
“Harry Blagg disputes the relevance of the western, urban, criminological paradigm to the Aboriginal domain, and questions the application of both contemporary innovations such as restorative justice and mainstream models of policing. He also refutes allegations that Aboriginal customary laws condone violence against women and children, pointing to the wealth of research to the contrary, and suggests these laws contain considerable potential for renewal and healing. This book maintains that unresolved questions of colonisation, decolonisation and sovereignty lie at the heart of debates about criminal justice in post-colonial Australia. It explores the potential for ‘hybrid’ initiatives in the complex ‘liminal’ space between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal domains, for example, Aboriginal community/night patrols, community justice groups, healing centres and Aboriginal courts” (Federation Press 2016).
Cunneen, C (1991). A Study of Aboriginal Juveniles and Police Violence, Report Commissioned by the National Inquiry into Racist Violence, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney.
Abstract: Information for this report was obtained from interviews with 171 Aboriginal juveniles in detention centers in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. Overall, 85 percent of the juveniles interviewed reported being hit, punched, kicked, or slapped by police. Some 63 percent of the juveniles reported being hit with objects by the police, and 32 percent reported having police revolvers either drawn or fired. Aboriginal girls had similar complaints of violence. The alleged assaults occurred on the street, during arrest, and at the police station. Complaints about violence and harassment in public places came particularly from suburban and business centers in Brisbane, Sydney, and Perth, but also included rural areas in the three States. Some 81 percent of the juveniles said they had been subjected to racist abuse by police officers, and a number of juveniles said that while they were in police custody, there had been suggestions made by police officers about the youths' committing suicide; some juveniles claimed police had threatened to hang them. Few of the juveniles interviewed had made any form of complaint about the alleged assaults. Recommendations intended to reduce police violence against Aboriginal youth include the presence of a trained independent person during police interrogations and other investigation procedures. Such a person would be knowledgeable about the rights and duties of the police and the suspect.
When criminalized Aboriginal peoples serving time in Canadian prisons wrote in penal presses, they often used genocide as a framework to discuss both their personal life histories and the colonial history that led to overrepresentation of Aboriginal peoples in prisons. Genocide, though, is not a straightforward idea, and the ways that Aboriginal prisoners wrote about genocide differed significantly from how scholars or politicians used the term. By interpreting these writings within Aboriginal storytelling traditions, this article illuminates the lived experience of genocide, how those experiencing incarceration viewed genocide within their belief structures, the ways that genocide became a critique against the Canadian government, and the spiritual basis for discussion of genocide. By reading Aboriginal prison writings as valuable intellectual pursuits, we can begin to interpret genocide within frameworks that differed from the insights from academia. First, genocide was experienced as part of both colonial and personal processes, meaning it was experienced at the community level and in personal violence in pre-carceral lives. Second, by telling stories of genocide, prisoners asserted their own survival, which reflected the goals of their organizations and functioned as a political critique against the Canadian government. Third, genocide became an identity-shaping force in the lives of criminalized Aboriginal peoples, which in turn shaped their experience of incarceration. Finally, genocide was not uniformly experienced, as it had important gendered differences. This article shows the nuance in prisoners’ discussions of genocide by proposing a new way of interpreting genocide within Aboriginal history in Canada by analysing penal publications as part of Aboriginal storytelling traditions, what the author refers to as ‘genocide-as-story’.
Abstract: The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody attributed the high rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody to the over-representation of Aboriginal people in prison. Most analyses of this over-representation focus on the issue of systemic bias in policing, the law or the operation of the criminal justice system. The present article contends that, while discriminatory treatment of Aboriginal people by police and the court system is an historical fact, the leading current cause of Aboriginal over-representation in prison is not systemic bias but high rates of Aboriginal involvement in serious crime. We argue that efforts to reduce Aboriginal imprisonment rates through policing or criminal justice system policy have failed and will continue to fail until they succeed in reducing crime in Aboriginal communities. Future efforts to bring down Aboriginal imprisonment rates should focus on this issue.
The purpose of this paper is on the impact of the Canadian justice system on Aboriginal people. The views expressed is from Laforme’s experiences as a judge of the province of Ontario’s superior trial court. In addition,, this article is based on Laforme’s life experiences as an Aboriginal person who grew up on the Mississaugas of New Credit Indian Reserve.
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to examine the leisure experiences of Aboriginal women in a Canadian federal prison as they engaged in traditional ceremony. This study explores how Aboriginal women’s experiences of ceremony, conceptualized as leisure, challenged the controlling environment of the prison and contributed to the release of pain and other feelings that resulted from traumatic events. The healing experiences of the Aboriginal women in this study are ultimately contrasted with the oppressive environment of the prison. The findings suggest that surveillance, discipline and punishment were replaced with a safe and secure emotional space, which provided an environment for the women to collectively reveal their vulnerabilities and begin to heal. This process of healing led to the embodiment of Sisterhood, which was portrayed through the development of mutually trusting, caring and supportive relationships.
A blog post written by a University of Toronto law student explaining the structural problems relating to the wrongful convictions of Donald Marshall.
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