Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason

This book is about how the history of colonialism has shaped the definition of crime and justice systems in former colonies. Biko Agozino argues that criminology in the West was originally tested in the colonies and then brought back to mother countries — in this way, he claims, the colonial experience has been instrumental in shaping modern criminology in colonial powers.He looks at how radical critiques of mainstream criminology by feminist and postmodernist thinkers contribute to understanding the relationship between colonial experience and criminology. But he also shows that both the feminist and the postmodernist critiques of conventional criminology do not go far enough as they remain virtually silent on colonial issues. Biko Agozino considers African and other postcolonial literature and contributions to counter colonial criminology, their originality, relevance and limitations. Finally he advocates a "committed objectivity" approach to race-class-gender criminology investigations to come to terms with imperialistic and neo-colonialist criminology.