Review – Counter-Colonial Criminology by Biko Agozino (2003)

Please note, I have previously commented on a journal article by Agozino. That article forms the basis to the introduction to this book. I feel I should also thank the blog A Very Public Sociologist for helping me come to terms a bit better with theorists like Baudrillard etc. which Agozino discusses and meant I probably understood what he was getting at better. Also, tomorrow the Carnival of Socialism will be hosted here.

Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason is an interesting book. For me it has it’s upsides and it’s downsides, and I’ll discuss the latter first as long as you can overcome these the book has an awful lot of interesting ideas within it.

There are two main problems with the book. The first is common to many academic books – an incessant use of jargon and convoluted terms which attempt to portray things in a value-free manner but end up confusing the reader and winding you up a lot. The second is in a review of the history criminology after almost every single theorist he points out that they ignored the experience of the colonial masses – but why do this after every theorist and not just at the end of the chapter pointing out what this missing element would have provided. Both these things are annoying as Agozino’s writing style is pretty good, but these points make some of the chapters a little difficult to get through.

However, leaving that aside Agozino presents some really interesting ideas. The only problems I have here with Agozino in this realm is his somewhat uncritical treatment of the Scraton/Hall school of critical criminology in comparison to left realism – both for myself had weaknesses. Also his understanding of Marxism could do with improving – although he applies Marx’s ideas of primitive accumulation quite well, nowhere does he mention Trotsky and in particular his theory of Combined and Uneven development which I think would be of fundamental use in this subject.

I suppose I’ve been quite critical so far, but only because those points would have improved what is a very interesting work. One interesting idea that Agozino suggests is how accurate is the metaphor of lesbian rape for colonial plunder – after all countries are referred to in the female usually and plunder is often referred to as rape, could things be drawn from feminist theorising in this respect. Another point he makes is the relevance of literature to criminology – particularly in respect of state crime in Africa given that criminology is especially under-developed there – and how this can reflect popular feelings towards crime. Whilst not seeing these as objective measures of crime like some researchers, he does see them as useful indicators and particularly useful for making analogies.

Another idea that Agozino raises is the necessity of not only looking at the punishment of offenders, but also at how innocent people may be punished through the criminal justice system. He devotes a chapter to criticising the death penalty and the number of people sentenced to death in the US who are later proved that either the sentence was unjustified or completely innocent in many cases (between them they make up 60%+).

There are more insightful things in this book too, but that would drag this review out far too long (although I may possibly come back to it at some point). This is a book that is worth reading so long as you can put up with the things I’ve criticised.

Imperialism and Criminology

This piece is a look at an article entitled Imperialism, Crime and Criminology: Towards the decolonialisation of criminology by Biko Agozino which appeared in the journal Crime, Law and Social Change.

Why do I like this paper? Because I suppose it addresses a big gap in criminological theory, the question of colonialism – the subjugation of more than half the world to a few imperialist powers and the huge state crimes committed in doing so.

Agozino starts by paraphrasing Lenin on imperialism and commenting on how criminology has by ignoring the crimes of imperialism served it very well. He then comments on a paper by Stan Cohen on attempts to take Western crime control ideas and import them into the third world – noting that criminologists in general either ignore third world countries or look at them in a very primitive manner.

He then goes on to note that in trying to understand crime and violence in Africa, it is essential to understand the conditions created by imperialism in these countries. He critiques the justification of imperialism as bringing enlightenment and development to the colonial world. Additionally he also tries to argue that even Marx argued that imperialism was necessary for countries to develop in an article published in the New York Times ‘The British Rule in India’. However, for myself Marx wasn’t justifying imperialism – rather noting that the imposition of British rule would speed up the likelihood of social revolution in India, a social revolution that would have happened eventually anyway.

He also notes that criminology has hardly developed at all in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and where it has it has only been in terms of western repressive models taught to security services. He also talks about one of the effects of developing criminology in these countries will be in arguing for reparations for the victims of the slave trade, apartheid, the Australian ‘stolen generations’ etc. However, for me, reparations are not likely to a meaningful level under capitalism and it doesn’t solve the ongoing financial imperialism that subjects the third world to the present day.

I particularly like his conclusion though, ‘The major limitation of this paper is that most of the claims in it have not been empirically investigated due to the limitation of funding available at the time of writing. Hopefully, research like this will be more generously funded and more empirically tested in the future. However, it is inexcusable to wait for generous funding before attempting to write something like this.’(pg.356) I heartily agree.