ABSTRACT
I’m writing this piece as a community scholar-activist sceptical of universities, with several questions about ‘decolonial criminology’. First let me say, I strongly believe that universities are intellectually responsible for the ongoing reproduction and maintenance of state-ordained violence, the perpetuation of white supremacy ideologies that supported the enslavement of Africans, colonization, new forms of colonialism, anti-Black/African racism, and other intersecting and interlocking systems of domination in society. Universities are called upon to legitimize the world of research, science, and the production of knowledge. With this context in mind, I ask the following questions: What is decolonization? From what and for whom is criminology to be decolonized? What is decolonial criminology? What is the relationship between abolition and decolonial criminology? How many necrocapitalist, university-market-driven fields or cannons of criminology already exist? And what makes decolonial criminology different from bell hooks’ (2000) formulation of “white supremacist, capitalist cisheteronormative, transphobic patriarchy” (p. 118), racial capitalism, transphobia, anti-Black racism, and anti-Indigenous racism in criminology? Can decolonial criminologists in white supremacist universities mobilize communities with resources to benefit their social uplift in a radically loving way? The final question is: Is their room in the master’s house for decolonizing criminology for African/Black people?
