Aboriginal Justice Research Articles

Crime and community: Issues and directions in aboriginal justice

Crime and community: Issues and directions in aboriginal justice

Aboriginal crime and justice: Explaining the present, exploring the future

Aboriginal crime and justice: Explaining the present, exploring the future

Policing and Aboriginal justice

As the systemic discrimination against Aboriginal people in Canada has become more apparent, the call for reform in policing — the front end of the criminal justice system - has intensified. Past reforms — including cross-cultural training, legal education of Aboriginal people, and 'indigenization' of policing — have clearly not had sufficient effect. Tribal policing, in itself, cannot address the systemic discrimation operating with the massive urbanization of Aboriginal people. An independent complaints system and constitutional reforms that enable “legal pluralism” and Aboriginal self-government are probably required to create the context for adequately reforming policing in Canada.

Some Issues in Aboriginal Justice Research:

The over-representation of Aboriginal people in the Canadian criminal justice system is the context within which the particular case of Aboriginal women is explored. This paper provides an explanation for the incidence and types of crime of Aboriginal women in order to identify the need to better understand the theoretical and methodological issues in the relationship of Aboriginal people to the broader society, in general, and to the criminal justice system is particular.

L'évolution de la justice traditionnelle dans l'Afrique francophone

ABSTRACTThe legal dualism provoked by the introduction of French law into Africa during the colonial period is presently one of the causes of the paralysis of institutional reforms in many countries which got their independence in 1960. The French because of their assimilationist and ethnocentric intervention refused to see any logic in pre-colonial systems. As far as indigenous justice is concerned traditional jurisdictions were combined with a system largely controlled by metropolitan institutions. Since then two trends have been opposed to each other. On one hand the Senegalese trend is based on the institutional transformation of aboriginal justice, on the other hand in the Congolese trend a great part is given to the internal adjustment of traditional structures to modernity. After fifteen years of legislative and jurisprudential experiences, it has become therefore a necessity to encourage a transformation of the existing organization in order to assure the citizen equality before the law, the “Afri...

Sentencing Circles, Clashing Worldviews, and the Case of Christopher Pauchay

The case of Christopher Pauchay demonstrates some of the differencesbetween predominant Euro-Canadian and First Nations approaches todispute resolution. The principles of sentencing circles sometimes overlapwith the principles of restorative justice and suggest their potentialincorporation into the criminal justice system. The use of alternativeprocesses that share some common values is not enough to overcome tochasm between Euro-Western and Aboriginal justice. Where underlyingworldviews diff er, those who can choose between competing valuesamidst limited possibilities will likely choose the values that refl ect theconventional system. A comparison of Euro-Western and Aboriginalapproaches to crime and punishment clarifi es why Pauchay’s sentencingcircle was unsuccessful as an alternative option. Advocates of alternativemethods must consider more than the implementation of a process whenadapting selective cultural methods to the overarching system. Withoutfurther evaluation, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) itself becomesa mechanism of recolonization.

The Award of Compensation in Criminal Cases in East Africa

In East Africa the traditional division of “native justice” on the one side and “English law” on the other is gradually disappearing. Within the foreseeable future it is possible to visualize a single system of law administered by one judiciary. The fusion of customary law and modified English law has been, or is being, achieved with a remarkable lack of friction. Generally speaking, however, customary law has had to make greater sacrifices in achieving the fusion than its more powerful brother, the common and statutory law of the three states. The latter has made a few minor concessions; for example, when customary criminal law disappeared in Uganda in 1964, the Penal Code was amended to admit adultery as a statutory offence. Adultery had been an offence among all the different tribes in Uganda. But it is usually customary law which has had to change to achieve a single system of law.

Policy and the Aborigines in Australia

IT is to be hoped that no apparent difference of opinion among anthropologists as to the ultimate fate of the Australian aborigines will be allowed to obscure the plain present duty of the Commonwealth Government in the matter of reform of policy and methods of administration. The report of Dr. Donald F. F. Thomson, research fellow of the University of Melbourne, to the Commonwealth Government on his observations as a special patrol officer for a period of fifteen months among the natives of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territories is uncompromising in its directness. He recommends, according to a dispatch of the Canberra correspondent of The Times in the issue of December 30, that the remains of the tribalized natives of the Northern Territories, who come under the control of the Commonwealth Government, should be segregated in an inviolable reserve; and that legislation similar to that in force in New Guinea for the protection of natives should be imposed in their interest. Watering depots for pearlers on the coast of Arnhem Land should be abolished. The policy of administering native justice should be revised; the police should not be allowed to act as protectors; and special courts for the aborigines should be established. It is recommended further that the Commonwealth Government should set up a Department of Native Affairs under a trained protector and staffed by men trained to apply anthropological methods; while eventually the administration of native affairs throughout Australia should be brought under one control. The Arnhem Land natives should not be permitted to leave the reserve, and missions should be requested to remove their stations to the outskirts of the reserve to prevent the entry of outside influence.