ACR214 - Inequality, Power and Justice

Content

While criminal justice systems across the world aim to promote neutrality and objectivity, extensive historical and contemporary research identifies how these processes can also discriminate against certain classes of people. For example, criminal justice processes can expose women, Indigenous people, people with intellectual disabilities, LGBTQIA+ people as well as other identifiable populations to specific forms of harm which can result in death, serious injury and more widespread cultural persecution or even destruction. This unit adopts a critical framework to analyse Australian criminal justice and its legacies of inequality. It is informed by a range of critical Indigenous, gender and disability perspectives that encourage us to understand and question mainstream understandings of crime and its control. The unit explores how a range of criminal justice interventions can compromise the pursuit of self-determination for individuals and groups who experience structural disadvantage, which commonly results in cycles of criminalisation, discrimination and trauma. The unit also examines how critical approaches to examining discrimination can support the development of improved practices that enhance equality and safety in the criminal justice system and help to recognise and limit harms generated by existing practices.

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