Jeannine M. Purdy
Published in 1997. It is well known in Australia that Aboriginal people are currently massively over-represented amongst the prison population. Although it is not officially acknowledged to the same degree in Trinidad, it is also well-known that Afro-Trinidadians are over-represented in the prisons of that county. The disproportionate criminalisation of Aboriginal Australians and Afro-Trinidadians is interpreted by the author as a continuation and concretion of the myth of the barbaric, uncivilised and ungoverned `savage; in opposition to which Western legal systems and societies have created their own identities.
The book departs from much contemporary analysis in this area by drawing strongly upon a historical analysis of the operations of the common law in Trinidad and Western Australia. By doing so, the book illustrates that race/ethnicity and criminalisation are not necessarily contiguous. What such analysis does reveal is another and more constant dimension to criminalisation; and that is economic basis of many of the legal relations instituted under British derived legal systems with respect to colonised peoples.
1. Introduction Part 1: Theory, Methodology and All That 2. Theory 3. Methodology 4. Other Matters Part 2: Contemporary Criminalisation 5. Criminalisation in Contemporary Trinidad 6. Criminalisation in Contemporary Western Australia Part 3: Law, Violence and Economics 7. Law 8. Violence 9. Economics 10. Conclusion
Published in 1997. The disproportionate criminalisation of Aboriginal Australians and Afro-Trinidadians is interpreted by the author as a continuation and concretion of the myth of the barbaric, uncivilised and ungoverned `savage; in opposition to which Western legal systems and societies have created their own identities.
