The criminalization of Indigenous people

[Extract] The police role is the one most directly connected to the production of knowledge about offending patterns of individuals or groups. In most instances, Indigenous people would not be before the courts without having been previously charged by the police with an offence. Indeed, for public-order offences in particular, the police play a direct role in observing and defining the commission of an "offence" and apprehending the offender. In this sense, there is a symbiotic link between policing and offending. Such a link makes nonsense of the notion of discrete criminal behaviour separate from the criminal justice system itself. For the purposes of the current argument it is important to consider in general terms the way policing interacts with, and shapes, the measures we use for understanding criminal behaviour among Indigenous people.