Abstract
Although we contend that juvenile delinquency is not a new phenomenon, David McCallum provides a unique look at this issue occurring in Australia and among the Aboriginal peoples in particular. Across Australia, the number of incarcerated juveniles is increasing despite many efforts to decrease it. While this is troubling, a major concern is that the Indigenous children are being incarcerated at even higher levels than other juveniles. Both are serious issues that McCallum seeks to address by exploring how these issues arose in the first place. Ultimately, this text challenges the notion that law and human sciences know what is best when attempting to predict and reduce juvenile delinquency. Instead, it implies that by looking solely at the numbers and hard facts, some groups are singled out and receive the focus of the punishment.
Criminalizing Children is a compelling examination of the policies used by Victorian welfare and justice authorities to classify at-risk children and how the circumstances of those policies’ emergence influenced the system today. McCallum accomplishes this through the examination of historical manuscripts and personal stories from the Aboriginal peoples within the Australian state of Victoria. While firsthand accounts and personal narratives may be problematic in terms of generalizability, they allow the reader to personally connect in a way that numbers do not allow. By examining this issue in this way, it is easier to gain an in-depth understanding from the people who experienced it. Many of us could not begin to imagine what the Aboriginal peoples had to endure, so the use of narratives, coupled with historical documents, allow us to do so.
He begins the examination by introducing readers to the historical backstory between the British and the Aboriginal peoples. While he includes descriptions of the criminal children, McCallum goes beyond the simple examination of the race as a motivating factor for the over incarceration of criminal children. After providing readers with an examination of children in the justice system in the early 20th century, McCallum takes a unique approach to this phenomenon by examining it through the psychological lens. As he states, a new problem was emerging in relation to Aboriginal welfare—the problematic “psychology” of the Aboriginal family.
Early conjecture believed that those children with mental deficiencies should not be mixed with more normal children because it could be extremely harmful not only for the normal child but also for the child with mental issues. For many people, this meant that there had to be an immediate separation of these defective children from the normal children. Their solution: institutionalization. Like most instance of immediate institutionalization, many of the children were sent away and received little to no medical treatment as it was believed that these mental deficiencies were incurable. It is here that McCallum breaks away from the traditional approach to this topic by expanding upon not only the reasons for this occurring but also how these beliefs were overcome.
This book is organized in a very logical manner, as it starts with the history of the relationship between the Aboriginal peoples and the State of Australia before moving into the more complex examination of the troubled and neglected children. This layout is extremely beneficial for readers who are not familiar with the Aboriginal peoples’ struggle. Not only does McCallum discuss the criminalized Aboriginal children, he also delves into the criminalization of White children as well. By examining both groups of children, he allows readers to understand the bigger picture of the increasing criminalization of children in Australia. By applying a social theoretical analysis of race and subculture, McCallum challenges readers’ assumptions that the law and governance of children always have the child’s best interests at heart.
David McCallum is an Emeritus Professor at the Centre for International Research on Education Systems and is the author or coauthor of four books and over 40 articles in the field of human sciences. He was also the previous Head of Humanities and Social Sciences Discipline Group in the College of Arts & Education at Victoria University from 2014 to 2017. As a member of the Sociological Association of Australia and the International Sociological Association, McCallum is in a prime position to write on this topic. Criminalizing Children is a perfect outlet for his knowledge of race, culture, and behavioral disorders in children.
This book lays out the problem, presents the data, and then challenges our previously held notions. A paper like this is crucial for young scholars to read because it examines the juvenile justice system’s impact on a group of individuals who are not widely known outside of Australia. It also forces academics to really stop and think about the impact of some programs. Do they really help the juveniles, or do they simply give everybody else peace of mind? McCallum challenges readers to think critically and to not become a cog in the wheel by doing things a certain way just because that was how they were always done. It causes readers to expand their thinking and to come up with a better solution for all parties involved and not just for the ones in a position of power.