Settler Colonial Governance and Criminology

Summary

The study of settler colonial governance is crucial for understanding the nature of power and control in settler states, particularly how it affects both Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations through systems of policing, legal authority, and incarceration. Settler colonialism is a distinct form of domination that is driven by the desire to seize and control land. It structures governance in ways that reflect its imperatives, especially the elimination of Indigenous peoples and the establishment of settler control over human and natural resources. In settler colonial societies, governance is entwined with racial and gender regimes, and both law and institutional power are wielded to maintain systems of oppression and subjugation. This manifests not only in the direct control of Indigenous lands but also through the regulation of non-Indigenous populations, often in racialized, gendered, and exploitative ways. Criminology, as an academic discipline, has largely failed to address the foundational role that settler colonialism plays in shaping legal and criminal justice systems. It tends to focus on individual and state interactions without recognizing how the broader project of settler colonialism influences practices of policing, adjudication, and incarceration. These practices are not neutral but serve to reinforce the ongoing project of Indigenous elimination and the subordination of people who do not embody heteronormative masculine Whiteness. Through the lens of the settler colonial analytic, modes of governance within the purview of criminology are revealed to be less about justice and more about maintaining control over subjugated populations and reinforcing settler colonial social order. By examining governance through the settler colonial analytic, criminologists can better understand the historical and ongoing practices of state violence, land theft, and subjugation that define settler states. Criminology’s role in perpetuating these systems becomes clearer when its history is considered alongside the logic and development of settler colonialism. By reckoning with disciplinary complicity in and support of atrocity, criminologists can consider how they might contribute to dismantling rather than reinforcing settler colonial structures.