Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment [Hardcover]

Indigenous People, Crime and Punishmentexamines criminal sentencing courts changing characterisations of Indigenous peoples identity, culture and postcolonial status. Focusing largely on Australian Indigenous peoples, but drawing also on the Canadian experiences, Thalia Anthony critically analyses how the judiciary have interpreted Indigenous difference. Through an analysis of Indigenous sentencing remarks over a fifty year period in a number of jurisdictions, the book demonstrates how judicial discretion is moulded to dominant white assumptions about Indigeneity. More specifically, Indigenous People, Crime and Punishmentshows how the increasing demonisation of Indigenous criminality and culture in sentencing has turned earlier gains in the legal recognition of Indigenous peoples on their head. The recognition of Indigenous difference is thereby revealed as a pliable concept that is just as likely to remove concessions as it is to grant them. Indigenous People, Crime and Punishmentsuggests that Indigenous justice requires a two-way recognition process where Indigenous people and legal systems are afforded greater control in sentencing, dispute resolution and Indigenous healing.

Introduction: Re-imagining the Indigenous criminal; Chapter One: Introduction to Indigenous Representations In Criminal Sentencing; Chapter two: Historicisng Colonial and Postcolonial Indigenous Crime and Punishment; Chapter three: Decolonizing Indineous Crime Statistics; Chapter Four: Sentencing away culture and customary marriage; Chapter Five: Traditional Punishment in the New Punitiveness; Chapter Six: Sentencing anxieties over ' Degenerates, Drunks and Criminals'; Chapter Seven: Sentencing Indigenous resisters as if the racism never occurred;Conclusion/Epilogue: Transforming Indigenous Recongnition

In short, Indigenous People, Crime and Punishmentmakes an important contl�