Counter‐Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason by B. Agozino

Abstract

Sometimes one gets away with not supplying a requested review, so I must explain this record-breakingly late comment on Biko Agozino's complex analysis of criminology as a colonial project and of how to reclaim an understanding of crime and punishment for the dispossessed. First amongst my reasons has been the persistence of successive Howard Journal book review editors; more relevant to this discussion has been my recent re-visiting of Caribbean criminology (Cain and Harriott 2007, forthcoming); most urgent has been the undoubted relevance of Agozino's work to my current writing projects on globalisation and crime. That said, and to add ambiguity to this reviewing role, Biko (whom I once taught at Cambridge), has, in this volume, critically discussed some of my work. Moreover, in 2007, he was appointed to my former Chair at the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies. To further compound this ambiguity, Biko most recently became my sponsor when he invited me to present a plenary paper at the XVI International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology in July 2006 (see Cain 2006). It is fortunate, indeed, that neither of us believes in the positivistic form of objectivity.Presented as a monograph, this book can also be read as a collection of essays. Five of the 13 chapters have been published previously. Thus the methodological and theoretical position emerges in a discontinuous but entirely consistent way throughout the text. The first four chapters offer a 'counter-colonial' critique of existing theory. This critique continues in the discussion of rape as a metaphor for international conflict (ch. 5), post-structuralism in criminological theory (ch. 6), and of truth and fiction in criminological analyses, drawing heavily on Baudrillard (ch. 7). These three chapters, however, depart from the more conventional packaging of the discipline as the sequential, or sometimes dialectical, emergence of different theoretical perspectives within criminology itself. Instead, they identify the consequences for criminology of more abstract philosophical and theoretical debates. In this way the underbrush is cleared for two chapters which for me constituted the high point of the reading experience, on 'Executive lawlessness and the struggle for democracy in Africa' (ch. 8) and on 'Radical criminology in African literature' (ch. 9). There follow two chapters dealing with methodological issues, two chapters dealing creatively with policing, 'black' appearance, and black culture, and a conclusion which wisely does not attempt to sum up this complex and discontinuous argument, but rather takes it further, reversing the customary (western) mode of thought to see both crime and crime control anywhere as an attempt 'to exercise colonial power over Others by imperialist force, threat of force, or fraud and cunning rather than through the democratic process' (p.244). The last device must surely refer to the author's historical knowledge of the tissue of promises and lies by means of which at different times...

The Howard League and liberal colonial penality in mid‐20th‐century Britain: The death penalty in Palestine and the Kenya Emergency

“…The legacy of penal liberalism at play in British criminology is reflected in the under analysis of both state‐based violence and the interaction between normal and exceptional penal practice during war, occupation and counter‐insurgency (Jamieson, 2016; Walklate & McGarry, 2015). The narrative has been purified of colonialism, which is an effect of colonialism (Agozino, 2003; Frenkel & Shenhav, 2006; King, 2017). Attention to emergency penal regimes provides a fuller picture of mid‐20th‐century British penality beyond its own shores and unsettles the narrative of a ‘kinder’ paradigm demolished by neo‐liberalism 24 .…”

“…This article contributes to burgeoning work that incorporates the significance of colonialism, and the legacies of Empire, into criminological analysis. As Agozino (2003Agozino ( , 2004 argues, Western criminology has paid scant attention to the harms of slavery and colonialism even though these harms dwarf much of what it chooses to focus on in terms of effects and legacy. For Agozino, criminology's silence about colonialism is an effect of colonialism.…”

Markers of entanglement: Survival strategies within the neoliberal university and the promise of carceral futures

“…As a discipline it has a "complicated past and polemical present" (Cohen, 1998: 6). Though criminology as a discipline and within each university department remains a contested space, and its liberatory potential consistently sought after (Agozino, 2003;Brown and Schept, 2017;Freidman, 2021;Piché, 2016), its complicity in "serving the technocratic aims of a neoliberal state" is well documented (Hathaway, 2015: 171). Nonetheless, there is always ongoing resistance, and disruption to these orientations and violences-I will return to these in the discussion.…”

Mass incarceration in times of economic growth and inclusion? Three steps to understand contemporary imprisonment in Brazil

“…If there is any common element among them, it is their western-centric approach. Dominant criminological knowledge has essentially been centred on the experiences of core countries (Agozino, 2003;Carrington et al, 2016;Cunneen, 2011), even when comparative studies are considered (Brangan, 2020;Dal Santo, 2021). Realities in global peripheries have been overlooked, and their role is at best limited to be sources of data or examples of the diffusion of North American crime control strategies, such as sentencing guidelines and zero-tolerance policing (e.g.…”