Abolition and (De)colonization

Abstract

This chapter argues that the criminal question, and the discipline of criminology, can only be decolonized by adopting an abolitionist praxis. Crime, the foundation of considerations of the criminal question, is a European concept that was (and is) central to its colonial project, whilst criminology’s key innovation, the discovery of the criminal Other, has its origin in the racial Other, central to European colonialism. This intimate link between colonialism and both the criminal question and criminology—a Gordian Knot—is so embedded that it cannot be decolonized by reform. Instead, a more radical approach, abolition, is required. Both decolonization and abolition require revolutionary changes to the social structure, breaking us free from existing power relations and developing new ways of living. Abolitionist praxis can sever the criminal question’s Gordian Knot and help to create Franz Fanon’s ‘something other’ that decolonization demands.