five - Indigenous women and settler colonial crime control

Summary

Indigenous contact with the criminal justice system throughout settler colonial jurisdictions shares one common statistical feature with all ethnic groups – the majority of those apprehended, convicted and imprisoned are (primarily young) men (Allard, 2010). However, where the statistical profile differentiates significantly is that Indigenous women are significantly over-represented compared to non-Indigenous men and women. Trends over the past decade show that the rate of their over-representation is increasing even more than for Indigenous men. Research also reveals that Indigenous women's experience of crime control policy and imprisonment is arguably becoming more punitive and disempowering (Sisters Inside, 2013).

While one might argue that in other respects their experience of crime and crime control mirrors that of other women, in so far as they experience high levels of physical and sexual victimisation, it can be argued that Indigenous women are further victimised and marginalised through the fact that their experiences and needs rarely impact on the development of crime control policy in settler colonial contexts (Stubbs, 2011). The lack of attention to Indigenous women, their issues and needs is compounded by the fact that they are systematically (and systemically) excluded from the development and application of crime control policies and interventions in settler colonial contexts. However, at the same time they are too often recipients of invasive crime control measures, such as policing and imprisonment (Baldry and Cunneen, 2014).

In this chapter we seek to challenge the marginalisation of Indigenous women within settler colonial crime control, by revealing both the nature and extent of their engagement with the criminal justice system, the impact of the failure of the sector to engage meaningfully with them, and the intersectional foundations of their interactions with the criminal justice system. We employ a critical Indigenous paradigm to analyse and expose the colonial ethos that sits at the heart of the state's response to Indigenous (women’s) offending and victimisation. Utilising the Northern Territory (NT) Emergency Response (‘the Intervention’) as a case study, we challenge the hegemonic construction of the Indigenous experience of criminal justice that permeates much of Western academic and settler colonial government theorising about the nature of Indigenous crime, much of which marginalises and fails to protect Indigenous women (Baldry and Cunneen, 2014; Cunneen and Rowe, 2015).