Aboriginal criminal justice: Background and foreground

[Extract] The experience of Aboriginal people and their patterns of involvement in the Australian criminal justice system have long been studied. the academic study of Aboriginal people and the law has been described as an 'established enterprise'. To this end, Aboriginal people have served as useful 'goods' for such academic endeavours, whether these endeavours focus on the 'traditional past', the colonising experience or contemporary disadvantage. Many Aboriginal leaders have acknowledged being the objects of such study especially with respect to 'problems with the legal system', where Aborigines are subject to 'a continual flow of commentary and classification'. Indeed, there has been a 'preoccupation with observing, analysing, studying, classifying and labeling Aborigines and Aboriginality'.