Traces of Terror

Counter-Terrorism Law, Policing, and Race

In the wake of 2001, terrorism laws and their policing have been charged with eroding civil liberties and discriminating against Muslim and ethnic minority peoples. Traces of Terror: Counter-Terrorism Law, Policing, and Race goes further and asks how counter-terrorism reproduces the social relations of race: what police and legal practice, what knowledge and what power makes over-policing normal. Based on field work in Australia, this book investigates the effects of counter-terrorism law and policing on Muslim, Somali, Turkish Kurds and Sri Lankan Tamil communities. Drawing together in-depth interviews with members of Victoria Police and those who are being policed, participant observations of community forums, and a detailed investigation of government and police policy, legislation and case law, the author explains how processes of criminalization and racialization are sustained. The study analyses preparatory terrorism offences and 'terrorist organization' laws, as well as the application of contentious concepts including extremism, radicalization and counter-radicalization. The book explains the management of difference, identity and belonging through expanding police and intelligence powers as well as through community policing and multicultural social policy. Above all, this book traces the persistence of race, racialization and racism in practices presented, on the surface, as 'race neutral', consensual and inclusive. From raids and prosecutions, to informal questioning and communitarian forms of regulation, it demonstrates the enduring and shifting meanings of these concepts as practices and their lived, often contradictory effects on the populations who experience them. Traces of Terror is not a study of police racism nor of experiences of discrimination, but rather an explanation of the enduring organisation of racial power reflected in, and produced by, counter-terrorism.