Law and justice and the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in national prisons

Abstract (English)

This year, after nearly 50 years, Leonard Peltier—an activist and member of the American Indian Movement from the Anishinaabe nation—is being released from an American prison. Amnesty International considers him a political prisoner who has been denied the right to a fair trial.
In many parts of the world, positive law enforced by national courts have led to the overrepresentation of indigenous community members in prisons and other detention facilities within national penitentiary systems. This issue is observed among others, in Latin American countries, Canada, Mexico, Australia. Western Australia, for example, has the highest rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth in detention, with 285.7 per 10,000 young people. In the Northern Territory, during the years 2022–23, the detention rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth was 70 times higher than that of other Australian young people.
This panel will explore the underlying causes and challenges of this phenomenon. Key questions to be addressed include:
• To what extent should positive law be used to judge individuals from indigenous communities?
• How do indigenous communities from different parts of the world define "law" and "justice," and can these concepts be reconciled with Western legal frameworks?
• Should the documented incompatibility between indigenous and Western legal systems, as described by many anthropologists, mean that the state should refrain from imposing prison sentences based on positive law? If so, under what circumstances?
• Can indigenous autonomy and legal pluralism help reduce the social issues linked to detentions and prison sentences imposed by representatives of the dominant society?
We invite anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, criminologists, and other scholars conducting interdisciplinary research to join the discussion on these critical issues.