Decoloniality, Abolitionism, and the Disruption of Penal Power
Chris Cunneen
Abstract
Abstract This chapter explores the coloniality of power as it is exercised through the material practices, discourses, and underlying epistemological assumptions of the criminal legal system and sets out the necessity for and potential parameters for decolonizing criminology. There are three broad ideas which underpin this chapter and provide a structure to the analysis. The first is the importance of understanding colonialism and the coloniality of power. The modern state is a colonial state or, in Walter Mignolo’s terms, coloniality is constitutive of modernity. The second is the importance of subaltern knowledges, epistemologies, and methodologies, and how criminal justice and criminology have failed to move beyond imperialist and colonialist ways of representing and understanding the world. The third and final section of the chapter considers whether and what role criminology might play in the strategies for a decolonial abolitionist activism. The chapter argues the necessity for, and the challenges facing, decolonialism in the context of policing and penal power and the compromised position of criminology.