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Anti-Blackness, Criminology and the University as Violence Work: Diversity as Ritual and the Professionalization of Repression in Canada

Tamari Kitossa (Brock University, CAN)
Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz (Brock University, CAN)

Diversity in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies

ISBN: 978-1-80117-002-4, eISBN: 978-1-80117-001-7

Publication date: 12 May 2022

Abstract

Purpose: To critically explore the implications of the August 2020, decision by Carleton University’s Institute for Criminology and Criminal Justice (ICCJ) to end to its intern program with the Ottawa police, the RCMP, Correctional Services Canada and Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre starting in Fall 2021.

Findings: In contrast to the negative reaction of Kevin Haggerty to this decision, the authors offer a strong but qualified endorsement of the ICCJ’s move to put an end to its internship with coercive institutions. The ICCJ strategically mobilized discourses of anti-Blackness and inclusion in response to the murder of George Floyd and the individual and communitarian traumas of Black, First Nations and Metis and students colour in its program. The ICCJ did not, however, substantively engage with the ways that criminology, sociology and the university are complicit through the legitimation practices and processes of ideology, professionalization and research in the ‘violence work’ of the state. The critique, ethics and logical conclusion of abolitionism are obfuscated.

Methodology/Approach: The authors explicitly draw on the Black Radical Tradition, Neo-Marxism and radical neo-Weberianism to sketch research possibilities that resist the university as a space of violence work, both in criminology and in the professionalization of policing.

Originality/Value: The debate between the ICCJ and Kevin Haggerty is an important opportunity to critically analyze the limits of critical criminology and lacunae of a debate about abolitionism, anti-criminology and university-state nexus as a site for the production of ideological and hardware violence work. Grounded in the Black Radical Tradition, neo-Marxism and radical neo-Weberianism, the authors sketch a framework for a research agenda toward the abolition of criminology.

Keywords

Citation

Kitossa, T. and Tanyildiz, G.S. (2022), "Anti-Blackness, Criminology and the University as Violence Work: Diversity as Ritual and the Professionalization of Repression in Canada", Silva, D.M.D. and Deflem, M. (Ed.) Diversity in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies (Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Vol. 27), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 39-61. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-613620220000027004

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022 Tamari Kitossa and Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz