ABSTRACT
The remarkable growth of crime-control institutions in many Western societies over the past few centuries has sparked a political and cultural preoccupation with crime control in our societies (Garland, 2002; Simon, 2007). The rhetoric behind this growth promised a fundamental diminution of crime, and by implication the attenuation of its punishment. Generations have heard versions of the promise and many have faced the effects of its unfulfilled aspirations (Garland, 1991; Stuntz, 2011). Even with fluctuations in crime rates, as noted, criminal justice arenas have expanded and captured certain groups of subjects disproportionately – the poor, indigenous groups, people of colour, men and so on (e.g., Alexander, 2012; Loury, 2008; Simon & Sparks, 2013; Wacquant, 2009a, 2009b). Such imbalanced representations of people across colonial criminal justice contexts is both striking and persistent, inviting questions about how it emerged and why it continues to dog criminal justice arenas. Of course, one chapter could hardly respond adequately to the social, economic, political, legal and cultural aspects of this far-reaching, multifaceted question. However, I shall focus on a basic, if not always considered, dimension of the matter, namely, colonial law’s contribution to a crime-control logic that perpetuates these uneven cohorts.
