University of New South Wales Faculty of Law Research Series
University of New South Wales Faculty of Law Research Series 2009
Colonial genocide and state crime
Article comments
This paper was presented at the Critical Criminology Conference, University of New South Wales, 19-20 June 2008. This paper may also be referenced as [2009] UNSWLRS 12.
Abstract
This paper sets out a framework for developing a criminological analysis of colonial genocide. Taking as its starting point Green and Ward’s (2004) definition of state crime as ‘state organised deviance involving the violation of human rights’, the paper addresses two main conceptual issues: the definition of genocide and state deviance. These are examined in two broad historical contexts: the battle for land and the resulting frontier violence; and the shifting terrain of official state polices that ranged from peaceful co-existence to protection to assimilation, and which included practices such as forced removal. The paper argues that colonial genocide needs to be understood in broader terms that the legal definition of genocide provided in the 1948 Genocide Convention and that state deviance towards the Indigenous population rests in part on the nature of the colonial settler state rather than aberrant departures from putative democratic norms or the rule of law.
Subject Area
Criminal Law and Procedure
Recommended Citation
Michael Grewcock,
"Colonial genocide and state crime"
(April 2009).
University of New South Wales Faculty of Law Research Series.
University of New South Wales Faculty of Law Research Series 2009.
Working Paper 12.
http://law.bepress.com/unswwps/flrps09/art12
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