Decolonisation as Departure: Interrogating the Reconstructivist Tendencies of Australian Criminology

In this article I critically analyse the recent “decolonial” turn within Australian criminology. Drawing upon critical Indigenous conceptualisations of decolonisation and analysing my personal confrontations with the discipline, I examine how criminologists mobilise decolonisation as a discourse rather than a praxis. By interrogating the discursive effects of recent calls to decolonise Australian criminology, I consider how criminologists mobilise decolonisation as a discourse to secure their own innocence and the futurity of Australian criminology. Building on the scholarship of Dylan Rodríguez (2021), I argue that the “decolonial” turn in Australian criminology is underpinned by a logic of “White Reconstruction”, which operates to reinscribe the discipline’s function as an accomplice to the state and inhibit possibilities for decolonial and abolitionist change. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of these reconstructivist tendencies for Indigenous scholars and scholars committed to decolonial and abolitionist praxis working within Australian criminology.