NCJ Number
189926
Journal
Punishment & Society Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Dated: July 2001 Pages: 355-379
Date Published
July 2001
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This article proposes that race is central to the historical sociology and contemporary practice of punishment in settler societies such as Australia.
Abstract
The roots of massively disproportionate indigenous incarceration rates at the present time must be explored in relation to the history of regimes and culture of racial segregation and governance in which indigenous peoples were coercively managed, for the most part outside "normal" legal and penal institutions, until the third quarter of the 20th century. The advent of the high incarceration of indigenous people coincides with the cessation of overtly segregationist policies and continues to produce some of the same social consequences for indigenous communities (social marginalization and civic disenfranchisement) behind a facade of legal impartiality. The reasons for this are complex. They are to be found in the legacy of segregationist policies, especially the wholesale removal of children and attempts to annihilate the means of reproduction of Aboriginal culture, as well as the manner in which punitive attitudes can become a vehicle for the expression of racial anxieties and antipathies in a liberal political culture in which overtly racist policy has no place. 1 table, 2 notes, and 99 references