British Criminological Amnesia: Making the Case for a Black and Postcolonial Feminist Criminology

Abstract

The discipline of Western criminology emerged during the colonial era as a means of controlling the ‘other’. Despite its failures in terms of recidivism these perspectives have been adopted on a global scale. Crime and punishment have been heavily influenced by these ideas and continue to reproduce them in relation to problematic, and pathologising, discourses such as the UK gang agenda which positions young black men as naturally aggressive, sexual predators and innately criminal. How criminologists carry out research also demands attention through a decolonial lens. A move towards a British postcolonial criminology has received scant attention despite there being a range of global literature which calls for changes to be made to the roots of the discipline. Similarly, feminist criminology in Britain has barely been touched by ideas of black and postcolonial feminisms. Consequently, drawing on what has written to further the cause of a black feminist criminology (BFC), this paper argues for the adoption of a black and postcolonial feminist criminology (BPFC) in the UK whereby issues of race, intersectionality and decolonial baggage are central to how we understand crime.