Youth justice and racialization: Comparative reflections
| Published date | 01 August 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619889039 |
| Author | Chris Cunneen |
| Date | 01 August 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Part III: Beyond the Binary |
889039TCR0010.1177/1362480619889039Theoretical CriminologyCunneen
research-article2019
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2020, Vol. 24(3) 521 –539
Youth justice and racialization:
© The Author(s) 2019
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Comparative reflections
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480619889039
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Chris Cunneen
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Drawing on comparative work between Australia and England and Wales, this article
considers issues of criminalization, racialization and youth justice. The article explores
both the overt and more subtle forms of racializing and criminalizing young people and
highlights the necessity for historically and situationally contextualized understandings
of identity and race. The rationalities, practices and discourses of youth justice through
which racialization occurs are identified, including how race itself becomes solidified as
a category in which people, in many cases, from heterogeneous backgrounds, can be
captured and named. In particular there is discussion of the rise of apparently neutral
and non-discriminatory justifications for intervention found in the use of risk assessment
that leads to racialized differentiation. It is argued that these practices both mask race in
their practices and mark race in their outcomes.
Keywords
Black youth, criminalization, Indigenous youth, racialization, risk assessment, youth
justice
This article arises from comparative work between Australia and England and Wales
which considered, among other issues, criminalization, racialization and youth justice.1
The research was particularly interested in understanding how Black and ethnic minority
young people in England and Wales, and Indigenous young people in Australia have
increasingly become the residual population of incarcerated youth at a time when incar-
ceration rates for young people were generally falling. During 2017–2018 Indigenous
Corresponding author:
Chris Cunneen, Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology
Sydney, PO Box 123, Broadway, Sydney, 2007, Australia.
Email: christopher.cunneen@uts.edu.au
522
Theoretical Criminology 24(3)
young people made up 56% of the Australian youth detention population and were 23
times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous youth (AIHW, 2019: 9). At
August 2019, Black, Asian and minority ethnic children constituted 51% of the impris-
oned youth population in England and Wales. Black young people were the largest sec-
tion of this group, comprising 57% of the total non-White group (Ministry of Justice and
Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, 2019: Table 6).
The article explores both the overt and more subtle forms of racializing and criminal-
izing young people. These various practices are evident in the way different types of
interventions and decision-making processes operate, for example, in stop and searches,
gang databases and the use of joint enterprise and consorting legislation. More subtly, the
rise of apparently neutral and non-discriminatory justifications for intervention found in
evidence-based practice (EBP) and risk assessment also lead to racialized differentiation.
These discourses and practices mask race through appeals to neutrality and scientific
legitimacy, while at the same time re-inscribing and thus confirming a link between par-
ticular social groupings of marginalized young people and a propensity towards dysfunc-
tion and criminality. Risk assessment in particular both masks race in its practices and
marks race in its outcomes. Racialized differentiation in youth justice is also gendered.
However, the data and research often conceal intersectionality through either reflecting
the subject area as gender-neutral, or considering gender and race as separate categories.
A similar problem arises with the absence of consideration of class where, for example,
questions of educational attainment or access to employment are presented as equal
opportunities available to all. These approaches limit our understanding of the extent to
which EBP and risk assessment reproduce specific racialized, classed and gendered
effects for children and young people.
The article also highlights the necessity for historically and situationally contextual-
ized understandings of identity and race. Such a contextual method is important for anal-
ysis of criminalization processes which, while showing similarities across the comparative
jurisdictions, also play out differently partly because of contrasting colonial and postco-
lonial settings. Further, differing administrative classifications of race are also context
dependent and solidify what are clearly fluid categories. Finally, different contextual
settings also affect the dynamics of resistance and reform.
Comparative research, colonialism and the context of race
Comparative criminological research in youth justice is complex and an appreciation of
context is vital (Goldson, 2019). In understanding the way race ‘works’ in the youth
justice systems of Australia and England and Wales, contextual understanding helps
explain some of the striking similarities and differences between the relevant jurisdic-
tions. Despite their differing colonial and postcolonial histories, youth justice systems
in both Australia and England and Wales exhibit significant over-representation of
racialized and minority ethnic groups of young people. In Australia this is predomi-
nantly expressed through the disproportionate criminalization and imprisonment of
Indigenous young people. However, young people from Arabic, African and Pacific
Islander backgrounds are also overrepresented in youth justice systems. In England and
Wales African-Caribbean, African and mixed-race children and young people are
Cunneen
523
consistently overrepresented in youth justice, as are other minority ethnic groups, par-
ticularly Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, and, increasingly, so too are young peo-
ple from various Muslim communities.
However, a distinct difference between England and Wales and Australia is the way the
historical legacy of colonialism has played out. The latter’s experience of settler colonial-
ism2 meant the violent and, at times, genocidal dispossession of Indigenous peoples from
their lands, followed by systematic racial discrimination which directly controlled all
aspects of Indigenous life for much of the 20th century, and the ongoing denial of political
sovereignty (Behrendt et al., 2019). Youth justice and child welfare systems continue to
perform a role in maintaining a colonial order which controls Indigenous families and
communities through the large-scale removal and incarceration of children and young
people and negates meaningful self-determination (Cunneen, 2016; Libesman, 2016).
Although children from various minority ethnic communities are overrepresented in
Australian youth justice, by far the most significant group is Indigenous young people. It
has been argued elsewhere that there is a direct relationship between the racially discrimi-
natory and exclusionary policies of settler colonialism and the contemporary overrepre-
sentation of Indigenous young people and adults in the criminal justice system (Blagg,
2016; Cunneen and Tauri, 2016). The different colonial experiences also impact on strate-
gies of resistance and the demands for change—a point returned to later in this article.
In England and Wales understanding colonialism also has a place, albeit in a different
context. For example, it has been argued that part of the structural conditions of contem-
porary overrepresentation of Black youth lies in the longer-term effects of slavery and
colonialism (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, 2007), including contempo-
rary Black understandings of discrimination, racism and crime (Palmer, 2014: 101–105).
Further, Britain’s imperialist past determined the nature of ethnic diversity, including
immigration from former colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean (Phillips and
Bowling, 2017: 192). In addition, there has been a long history to the control of Gypsy,
Roma and Traveller communities which ‘reveals a leitmotif of state-sponsored exclusion
and criminalization for more than five centuries’ (Phillips, 2019: 338).
Talking about race is a complex and political process (Patel and Tyrer, 2011: 2)
because race has no objective, inherent or fixed quality (Delgado and Stefancic, 2007).
This article utilizes the concept of racialization, while acknowledging that there is debate
over the term. For some, racialization is considered a term that is overused and some-
thing of a cliche (Goldberg, 2005). However, I use the term primarily because it directs
attention to the social, political, economic and legal processes through which race is
made meaningful in specific contexts (Murji and Solomos, 2005: 3). If race has no inher-
ent attributes, then it is imperative to understand the social processes through which the
dominant society engages in racializing different groups, in making race intelligible and
in structuring the field of raced relation(ship)s. It requires an examination of the ‘precise
circumstances’ in which racialization occurs within the criminal justice system (Glynn,
2014: 12) and the production of knowledge about the behaviours and pathologies of the
racialized ‘other’ which justifies exclusionary practices (Collins et al., 2000:...
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