Human Rights, Colonial Criminality, and the Death of Kwementyaye Briscoe in Custody
A Central Australian Case Study
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2290586 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Holcombe (0000-0001-5459-4180, Australian National University), Sarah Holcombe |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | S1 |
| Pages | 104-120 |
| Publication date | 2016-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | PoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1081-6976 • E-ISSN: 1555-2934 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/plar.12174 |
| OpenAlex | W2522511651 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 26 |
The intersection of colonialism, legal systems, and human rights is revealed in the Alice Springs Watch House, a place for the temporary custody of, usually intoxicated, Aboriginal men. "Kwementyaye Briscoe" became the fourth death in custody since 1999; and this article draws on his coronial inquest. The post-mortem humanity of the coroner is contrasted with the uncaring disregard of the police for Briscoe while he lived. These contradictory postures reveal the contingency of Aboriginal people's human rights in the neoliberal colonial state. Critical criminology has revealed that the Australian legal system has been complicit in establishing and reproducing the Aboriginal "criminal". Relative to colonial relations of power, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the associated machinery of international law are relatively recent phenomena. This articles questions: What can a consideration of the discourse of human rights bring to an understanding of the treatment of an Aboriginal man in custody, and is this discourse complicit? Also, would sanctioning human rights in national law, via, for example, a bill of rights, legitimize human rights while simultaneously revealing their tacit assumptions? Agamben's concept of "bare life" sheds light on the paradoxes of human rights, as they are intensified in this custodial context
Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses
Citizens without Rights
Human Rights and Empire
Rights Talk and the Experience of Law
The State of Exception
Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry
Regulating Aversion
Prisoners of Freedom
Governing Through Crime
Materialising Oceania
Homo Sacer
Isle of exception
The contingency of ‘rights’
Crafting the Neoliberal State
Through the Wire
Perplexities of the rights of man
Who Is the Subject of the Rights of Man
In the Mind's Ear
We Couldn't Tolerate Any More
At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology
Demand Sharing
Agamben, Arendt and human rights
Anatomies of Relatedness
| Citations per year | 0.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |