Colonial policing practices in Queensland and their contemporary legacies
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines the policing of marginalised groups in colonial Australia, and the legacies of these practices. While scholars have recognised that police officers were at the forefront of the creation of a new social order in the Australian colonies, there have been limited analyses of how officers negotiated their roles and operated in practice within the communities that they policed. Focusing on Queensland, this article examines the ‘suspect communities’ who were heavily monitored and criminalised by police: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and non-European immigrant groups, primarily from China and Pacific Islands. It draws mainly on the evidence provided by the Queensland Police Gazette of policing practices and arrests, alongside parliamentary reports and relevant newspaper reports on policing, to reveal how policing operated on the ground. The decisions taken by police officers to suspect and apprehend individuals from these ‘suspect communities’ in significant numbers shaped and perpetuated wider societal stereotypes of criminality.These policing practices have significant and ongoing legacies in the Australian context for Indigenous Australians and non-European immigrant groups. The targeted policing practices and criminalisation examined here have ongoing intergenerational impacts on marginalised communities, and contemporary neocolonial policing practices continue to perpetuate these patterns. Reflecting on the connections between the historical and the contemporary, this article shows that we need to fully understand colonial and historical policing practices to begin to unpick problematic and deep-rooted contemporary police stereotyping.
Source: Policing & Society
Author: Eleanor Bland
Institution: Oxford Brookes University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4411429216