Leanne Weber - Place, Race and Politics: The Anatomy of a Law and Order Crisis

How is it that South Sudanese migrants, an overwhelming law-abiding group, have come to be criminalised in Australia? Using the 2016 Moomba riot, Place, Race and Politics charts the creation of a racialised law and order crisis in Melbourne. This terrific new book provides a detailed analysis of how social and political processes came to associate South Sudanese blackness with violent crime and what the consequences of this criminalisation were on the community. I strongly recommend it.

Karen Farquharson, Professor of Sociology and Vice President of the Academic Board, University of Melbourne

Following in the tradition of Hall et als classic, Policing the Crisis, Place Race and Politics: The Anatomy of a Law and Order Crisis analyses the racialisation and politicisation of crime during the 2018 Victorian election in Australia. Drawn from a number of discrete research projects undertaken by each of the authors, the book is broken down in chapters that largely reflect these different projects. As a result, the authors are able to focus on different elements of the law and order crisis from the demonisation and dangerisation of asylum seekers and immigrant groups, to the medias reportage and amplification of events, the populist political discourse and indeed interviews with those at the coalface of events. It makes for a sobering read as it teases out the long-standing Australian twin political strategies of vilification and law and order auctioneering. As the book shows there are no real winners to come out of such strategies and, ultimately, they serve to undermine the legitimacy even of the political winners in this case the Victorian Labor party beholden to a tough on crime approach for the foreseeable future. The authors wisely eschew a straight moral panic approach to the topic (while not rejecting it altogether) and offer something more sophisticated. Race and Politics: The Anatomy of a Law and Order Crisis makes a significant contribution to critical scholarship on law and order in Australia, but in doing so also explores the tentacles of racism, xenophobia and insecurity that constantly threaten to erode the successful foundations of multi-cultural Australia.

Murray Lee, Professor in Criminology and Associate Dean Research, University of Sydney Law School

BY

LEANNE WEBER

University of Canberra, Australia

JARRETT BLAUSTEIN

Monash University, Australia

KATHRYN BENIER

Monash University, Australia

REBECCA WICKES

Monash University, Australia

And

DIANA JOHNS

University of Melbourne, Australia

United Kingdom North America Japan India Malaysia China

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2021

Copyright 2021 Leanne Weber, Jarrett Blaustein, Kathryn Benier, Rebecca Wickes and Diana Johns. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80043-046-4 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-045-7 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-047-1 (Epub)

List of Acronyms

About the Authors

Leanne Weber is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Canberra, Australia, and a Research Associate at the Centre for Criminology, Oxford University. She researches policing and border control using criminological and human rights frameworks. Her books include Crime, Justice and Human Rights, 2014 (Palgrave, with Elaine Fishwick and Marinella Marmo); Policing Non-Citizens, 2013 (Routledge); Stop and Search: Police Power in Global Context, 2013 (Routledge, with Ben Bowling) and Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier, 2011 (Palgrave, with Sharon Pickering), which was awarded the inaugural Christine M Alder Book Prize by the ANZ Society of Criminology.

Jarrett Blaustein is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. His research currently focusses on intersections between security and sustainable development governance, law and order politics and the global mobility of crime control policies. Jarrett's sole-authored book titled Speaking Truths to Power: Policy Ethnography and Police Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina was nominated by the publisher, Oxford University Press, for the 2016 British Society of Criminology Book Prize and his research also appears in a number of leading criminology journals.

Kathryn Benier is a Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Her research focus is urban criminology and the neighbourhood ecology of crime. Kathryn's work focusses on hate crime and the impact of immigration and ethnic diversity on social relationships, cohesion and sense of belonging over time. Her work primarily investigates the impact of social exclusion and crime on young people, primarily those of African or Muslim heritage. Kathryn has an interest in quantitative methodology and extending new statistical techniques in other fields into criminological research.

Rebecca Wickes is a Professor at the School of Social Sciences at Monash University where she is the Director of the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. She is also the Chief Investigator of the Australian Community Capacity Study (ACCS), a multi-million, multi-site, longitudinal study of 298 urban neighbourhoods in Victoria and Queensland. Her research focusses on the spatial concentration of social problems with a particular focus on how physical and demographic changes in urban communities influence social cohesion, the informal regulation of crime and victimisation.