Abstract
This chapter offers a ‘contrapuntal’ reading of Australian prisons as exclusive sites of settler colonial repression. We refer to transcripts from 2016 to 2017 Royal Commission into Child Protection and Youth Detention in the Northern Territory to reveal how the brutal treatment of Indigenous children in prisons is part of the same continuum of racism that reduces Indigenous lives to ‘bare life’. Imprisonment is not an exceptional state of un-being for Indigenous people. Rather, in the colony, the exception is the norm. The rights for Indigenous people cannot be afforded individually but need to recognise and account for Indigenous dispossession, state domination and Indigenous sovereign claims. Penal abolitionism can only be meaningful within a process that decolonizes other sites of exception for Indigenous people.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
AB. (2017). Statement. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 1 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/evidence-2017/evidence23march/Exh-139-001.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
AD. (2016). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 9 December. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2016/Transcript-9-December-2016.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Agamben, G. (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (D. Heller-Roazen, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
AI. (2017). Transcript of closed court proceedings. In the Matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 21 June. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-21-June-2017-closed-court-session-1.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
AN. (2017). Statement. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 17 February. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/evidence-2017/evidence24march/Exh-159-001.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Anderson, P. A. (2016). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 12 October. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2016/Transcript-12-October-2016.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Anthony, T. (2003). Postcolonial feudal hauntings of northern Australian cattle stations. Law Text Culture, 7, 277–307.
Anthony, T. (2004). Labour relations on northern cattle stations: Feudal exploitation and accommodation. Australian Review of Public Affairs, 4(3), 117–136.
Anthony, T. (2007). Reconciliation and conciliation: The irreconcilable dilemma of the 1965 “equal” wage case for Aboriginal station workers. Labour History, 93(11), 15–34.
Anthony, T. (2007/2008). The feudal thread in the Indian and Australian colonial colonies: A comparative approach. Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia, 39/40(1), 50–70.
Anthony, T. (2010). Governing crime in the intervention. Law in Context, 27(2), 90–113.
Anthony, T., & Blagg, H. (2013). STOP in the name of who’s law? Driving and the regulation of contested space in central Australia. Social & Legal Studies, 22(1), 43–66.
Arnold, D. (1994). The colonial prison: Power, knowledge and penology in nineteenth-century India. In D. Arnold & D. Hardiman (Eds.), Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha (pp. 148–187). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
AU. (2017). Transcript of closed court proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 23 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-23-march-2017-Closed-court.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Auty, K. (2000). Western Australian courts on native affairs 1936–1954—One of “our” little secrets in the administration of “justice” for Aboriginal people. University of New South Wales Law Journal, 23, 148–172.
Auty, K. (2005). Black Glass: Western Australian Courts of Native Affairs 1936–54. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press.
Bauman, Z. (1997). The work ethic and prospects for the new poor. Arena Journal, 9, 57–76.
Beresford, Q., & Omaji, P. (1996). Rites of Passage: Aboriginal Youth, Crime and Justice. Perth: Fremantle Press.
Blagg, H. (2016). Crime, Aboriginality and the Decolonisation of Justice (2nd ed.). Sydney: The Federation Press.
Blagg, H., Morgan, N., Cunneen, C., & Ferrante, A. (2005). Systemic Racism as a Factor in the Over-Representation of Aboriginal People in the Victorian Criminal Justice System. Report to the Equal Opportunity Commission and Aboriginal Justice Forum, Melbourne.
Blom Hansen, T., & Stepputat, F. (2005). Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Brown, M. (2014). Penal Power and Colonial Rule. Oxon: Routledge.
BY. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 16 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-16-March-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Césaire, A. (2000). Discourse on Colonialism (J. Pinkham, Trans.). New York: Monthly Review Press.
Chowdhry, G. (2007). Edward Said and contrapuntal reading: Implications for critical interventions in international relations. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 36(1), 101–116.
CJ. (2017). Statement. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 31 May. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/evidence-2017/evidence31may/Exh-474-000.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
CL. (2017). Transcript of closed court proceedings. In the atter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 2 June. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/evidence-2017/evidence2june/Exh-486-000.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Collits, T. (2005). Postcolonial Conrad: Paradoxes of Empire. London: Routledge.
Coon, L. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a royal commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 21 April. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-21-April-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Cunneen, C., Baldry, E., Brown, D., Brown, M., Schartz, M., & Steel, A. (2013). Penal Culture and Hyperincarceration: The Revival of the Prison. Farnham: Ashgate.
DB. (2017). Statement. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 26 June. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/evidence-2017/evidence26june/Exh-577-000.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
De Feyter, K., & Pavlakos, G. (Eds.). (2008). The Tension Between Group Rights and Human Rights: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Oxon: Hart Publishing.
De Souza, L. J. M. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 22 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-22-March-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
DF. (2017). Transcript of closed court proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 30 June. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/evidence-2017/evidence30june/Exh-653-000.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
DG. (2017). Transcript of closed court proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 22 June. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-22-June-2017-Closed-Court-Session-1.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Diken, B., & Laustsen, C. B. (2002). Zones of indistinction: Security, terror, and bare life. Space and Culture, 5(3), 290–307.
DM. (2017). Recording played to the commission. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 22 June.
DO. (2017). Recording played to the commission. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 19 June.
Elferink, J. W. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 27 April. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-27-April-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Engels, K. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 9 May. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-9-May-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Fanon, F. (1986). Black Skin, White Mask. London: Pluto Press.
Fattore, J. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 14 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-14-March-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Finnane, M., & McGuire, J. (2001). The uses of punishment and exile: Aborigines in colonial Australia. Punishment and Society, 3(2), 279–298.
Ford, L. (2010). Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788–1836. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Allen Lane.
Foucault, M. (1978). History of Sexuality: An Introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Random House.
Foucault, M. (1979). Governmentality. Ideology and Consciousness, 6(5), 21.
Foucault, M. (1984). Truth and power. In P. Rainbow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader (pp. 51–75). New York: Pantheon Books.
Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gibson, P. (2012). Return to the ration days: The Northern Territory intervention—Grassroots experience and resistance. Ngiya: Talk the Law, 3, 58–107.
Gibson, P. (2017). 10 impacts of the NT intervention. NITV SBS, 21 June. [Online]. Available http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2017/06/21/10-impacts-nt-intervention. Accessed October 10, 2017.
Giles, A. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 28 April. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-28-April-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Gray, S. (2007). The elephant in the drawing room: Slavery and the “stolen wages” debate. Australian Indigenous Law Review, 11(1), 30–53.
Gregory, D. (2004). The Colonial Present. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hamburger, R. K. (2016). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 6 December. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2016/Transcript-6-December-2016.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Harman, K., & Grant, E. (2014). Impossible to detain … without chains’? The use of restraints on Aboriginal people in policing and prisonsxs. History Australia, 11(3), 157–176.
Harvey, D. (1985). The geopolitics of capitalism. In D. Gregory & J. Urry (Eds.), Social Relations and Spatial Structures. Critical Human Geography. London: Palgrave.
Havnen, O. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 21 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-9-May-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Huggins, J. (1987/1988). “Firing on in the mind”: Aboriginal women domestic servants in the inter-war years. Hecate, 13(2), 5–23.
Hunyor, J. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 20 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-20-March-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Jones, R. (2016). Stories from the long grass: The daily struggle to survive for Darwin’s growing number of homeless Indigenous people. ABC News, 12 October. [Online]. Available http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-29/darwins-homeless-longrassers-tell-of-struggle-to-survive/6570440. Accessed October 16, 2017.
Kelleher, B. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 21 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-9-May-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Mbembe, A. (2001). On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11–40.
Middlebrook, K. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 28 April. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-28-April-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Mignolo, W. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press.
Morgensen, S. L. (2011). The biopolitics of settler colonialism: Right here, right now. Settler Colonial Studies, 1(1), 52–76.
Pratt, J. (1994). Understanding punishment: Beyond “aims and objectives”. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 5(3), 301–308.
Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 23(2/3), 168–178.
Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Rowse, T. (2002). White Flour, White Power: From Rations to Citizenship in Central Australia. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage.
Sylvester, C. (2006). Bare life as a development/postcolonial problematic. The Geographical Journal, 172(1), 66–77.
Tasker, D. J. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 15 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-15-March-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Thobani, S. (2007). Exalted Subjects. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Tobin, E. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 24 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-24-March-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Turner, J. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 13 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-13-March-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Voller, D. (2016). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 12 December. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2016/Transcript-12-December-2016.PDF. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Voller, D. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 20 April. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-20-April-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Wacquant, L. (2001). Deadly symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and mesh. Punishment & Society, 3(1), 95–134.
Watson, I. (2011a). Aboriginal(ising) international law and other centres of power. Griffith Law Review, 20(3), 619–640.
Watson, I. (2011b). The declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples: Indigenous survival—Where to from here? Griffith Law Review, 20(3), 507–514.
Watson, I. (2015). Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism and International Law: Raw Law. Oxon: Routledge.
Wolfe, P. (1999). Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event. London: Cassell.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409.
Zamolo, C. L. (2017). Transcript of proceedings. In the matter of a Royal Commission into the child protection and youth detention systems of the Northern Territory, 20 March. [Online]. Available https://childdetentionnt.royalcommission.gov.au/NT-public-hearings/Documents/transcripts-2017/Transcript-20-March-2017.pdf. Accessed March 13, 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blagg, H., Anthony, T. (2018). ‘Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make’: Bare Life and the Carceral Archipelago in Colonial and Postcolonial Societies. In: Stanley, E. (eds) Human Rights and Incarceration. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95399-1_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95399-1_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95398-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95399-1
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)