Criminology and criminal justice research and evaluations are important in achieving and promoting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s human rights, including by undertaking and promoting research that supports self-determination. To achieve this, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples  (UNDRIP), which the Australian government formally supported in 2009, must be understood and applied.    

 

The right to self-determination is clearly affirmed in the UNDRIP. This means that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have a right to control and protect their cultural heritage and knowledge, including a right to mandate or influence how their experiences with the criminal justice system and related political and social systems are researched or evaluated. 

 

As the NHMRC’s Keeping research on track II, a community guide to Ethical conduct in research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and communities: Guidelines for researchers and stakeholders (2018), notes, the right to self-determination includes the right of an individual, community or organisation to participate or not in research, and the right to request more time to discuss research proposals that are made to them.

 

Self-determination is a political right to determine, inter alia, the nature of laws, policies and practices which affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This latter point is particularly relevant to research and evaluations that make recommendations for action, asserting that those recommendations must recognise the specific aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people connected to the area of study.  

 

Recognition and respect

 

In applying the UNDRIP, research and evaluations must recognise and value the cultural distinctiveness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities. This includes recognition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are diverse, and that diversity is reflected in, for example, language, culture, geography, experiences, demographics and identities. Diversity is also seen among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, and individuals, as well as communities. Accordingly, research and evaluations must take into account, plan for, acknowledge and respect this diversity. 

 

Diversity impacts on experiences of, and outcomes produced by criminal justice interventions and criminal laws. Generalising research findings, for example, from analyses of large administrative data sets, can overlook diversity, and can be harmful to individuals, families and communities.  

 

Recognising diversity also means respecting ‘intersectionality’; that is, identifying issues that relate to other dimensions of life, not only Indigeneity. Research should better understand experiences in the criminal justice system, class, gender, sexuality, disability, location and other forms of social stratification.

  

Respecting, protecting and maintaining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and input must be done in a way that matches cultural protocols and values. In conducting criminology and criminal justice research and evaluations, consideration must be given to whether or not it is necessary to collect certain data that may be considered sensitive or inappropriate to disclose, despite common discipline-specific practice that would encourage the collection of as much information as possible.  

 

Once data has been collected, criminology and criminal justice researchers must acknowledge and assign any intellectual property to the rightful owners of the intellectual property. This may manifest as co-authored publications or reports, sharing in any monetary benefits arising from the research or outputs, and data sets being held by rightful owners.  

 

Engagement and collaboration

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There should be a concentrated effort to honestly and openly engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and community leaders about the subject matter of interest, and how the research or evaluation could be conducted collaboratively with relevant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, organisations and/or communities. 

 

This mutually respectful exchange of ideas should explore what data could be collected, how it could best be collected and analysed, and what capacities need to be developed in order to collaborate e.g. local cultural awareness training, and culturally-safe research and evaluation skills training. This should not only occur for qualitative research but also criminology and criminal justice research that relies on administrative data collected by government agencies.   

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Practices need to be respectful of local community protocols.  

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Engagement and collaboration need to be clear about how potential research outcomes will benefit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities in the criminal justice system and also stipulate any risks or potential negative impacts that might result due to the research or evaluation being conducted.  

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Engagement and collaboration should be ongoing and not something that simply occurs during the design phase of a project. Only through ongoing engagement can differences of opinions and worldviews be understood and used as a strength of research and evaluations regarding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities.   

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Informed consent

 

All research and evaluations require serious consideration about gaining consent from participants. The UNDRIP provides clear information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s decisions to participate in research being free, prior to any activity occurring, informed of all the options and consequences, and based on consent.  

 

Consultation and negotiation with relevant community leaders should occur even when the research or evaluation is based on analyses of administrative data. Only in this way can criminology and criminal justice researchers ensure there has been a consent-seeking process, even for research that does not involve human participants.  

 

Informed consent principles and processes are well-established:

 

Free means no force, bullying or pressure. Prior means that we have been consulted before the activity begins. Informed means we are given all of the available information and informed when that information changes or when there is new information. If our peoples don’t understand this information then we have not been informed (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, 2011:115).

 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s decision-making should be supported to occur within the relevant local timeframe and process, not that of an interested third party. This means clearly identifying who has decision-making authority, and also ensuring there is a mechanism for broader community participation for free, prior and informed consent.

 

Processes for obtaining informed consent from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island research participants must also recognise and adhere to principles and practices determined locally. For example, this might mean that researchers will have to accommodate protocols that favour collective over individual consent. It may also mean that consent may be signalled in formats other than a written, signed document. 

 

Cultural capability and learning

 

Criminology and criminal justice researchers must be culturally capable and engaged in ongoing learning about themselves, their influence on research design, partners, participants and interpretation of findings. This must be based on up-to-date information produced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as well as about rights.  

 

Cultural responsiveness requires researchers to understand their own cultural identities, influences and biases, their views about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and criminal justice, and how they were shaped (Indigenous Allied Health Association, 2019). Undertaking the practice of critical self-reflection before, during and after the research process is crucial.  

 

Inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s perspectives and epistemologies – ways of being, knowing and doing – should be included in the design of research and evaluation. This requires inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, staff, advisors and supporters being clearly identifiable in research and evaluation plans, and on funding applications. 

 

Recognising and understanding researcher bias is a standard part of any research process and it is feasible then to extend reflexivity to understanding one’s perspective informing understandings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 

 

Given bias exists in research methodologies and methods to analyse criminal justice interventions (Marchetti & Bargallie, 2017; Tauri, 2018), criminology and criminal justice researchers must identify processes through which they can decolonise and deracialise research agendas, not only using western methods and theories (Cunneen, 2021; Williams, 2021). 

 

This requires researchers to consider the ongoing role of colonialism in modern Australia when developing ideas about crime and justice, and includes inquiring about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s experience of colonialism.

 

Equally essential is recognising that both historical and contemporary criminology and criminal justice research and evaluation is deeply implicated in racialising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Researchers must refrain from this process of racial categorisation – that is ascribing negative racial characteristics or attributes to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples based on historical stereotypes. This makes for a more humanising approach to research.

 

Further, given humans form institutions and systems, research and evaluations must also focus on the ways that institutions and systems produce or can be reformed to address institutional and systemic racism.