Way, Ann --- "Book Review - The Police and Young People in Australia" [1994] AboriginalLawB 19; (1994) 3(67) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 18

• Book Review-Police And Young People In Australia

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Book Review -

Police and Young People in Australia

Edited by Bob White and Christine Alder

Cambridge University Press 1994

252 pp, $29

Reviewed by Ann Way

The publication of this volume is timely given the current interest in juvenile justice nationally. The New South Wales Government is due to release its white paper on juvenile justice and, on a more sensational note, the Premier of Western Australia has threatened to send young car thieves to military style work camps. Police-youth relations are the front line of juvenile justice, determining the attitudes of a large number of young people to the criminal justice system.

In the Introduction to The Police and Young People in Australia, the editors state that their intention is to "provide the reader with a solid grounding in the social, legal and institutional aspects of the police-youth relationship". White and Alder have achieved this aim, including chapters which focus on the policing of young women, ethnic young people and Aboriginal young people. However, it is a shame that only three of the ten contributors are women given that a recurring theme in the book is social fairness.

The chapter on Aboriginal young people and the police is by Chris Cunneen, who has published widely in the areas of policing, juvenile justice and the relationship between Aboriginal young people and the criminal justice system. His contribution poses a provocative question - in their dealings with young Aboriginal people, are the police enforcing genocide?

Cunneen charts a continuum of oppression in which police have been the enforcers of racist political and social structures. He argues that the role of the police in implementing the policies of the Aborigines Protection Board removing Aboriginal children from their families has its legacy in the gross over-representation of Aboriginal young people in police custody today. Processes of institutionalisation have simply been replaced with criminalisation and the overt racism of colonialism has become covert violence: "The contemporary political characterisation of Aboriginal young people as a law and order problem, especially when understood with an appreciation of the historical functioning of policing in a colonial society, provides the structure for the social dynamics of policing Aboriginal youth."

The specific circumstances of Aboriginal young people are also canvassed by several of the other contributors although in those instances the treatment is slightly more cursory. Christine Alder explores the way in which Aboriginal young women are subject to additional forms of regulation and surveillance. In his chapter entitled "Street Life: Police Practices and Youth Behaviour", Rob White depicts the particular vulnerability of Aboriginal young people to aggressive police intervention.

The Police and Young People in Australia is a useful contribution to contemporary criminology. It is accessible, affordable and provides an excellent source of references. The contributors offer a rare combination of scholarship and compassion in their exploration of the links between policing as a distinct form of social practice, and the specific position of young people ... in Australian society".