Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes that police brutality and negligence towards targeted minority groups is subjective violence that is systemically legitimised by necropolitical, neoliberal government structures.

Paper long abstract:

Societies in settler-colonial countries are quintessentially necropolitical as a direct result of their attempt to eliminate the existing Indigenous populations and replace them with settlers. In settler-colonial countries, all too often, the death of individuals from minority groups occurs at the hands of the State's instruments of social control through the exercising of necropower. The number of such deaths is rising to a crisis point that demands greater attention and investigation. This paper aims to explore the theories of Agamben, Foucault, and Mbembe in relation to police brutality in the context of minority groups and arguing that this is subjective violence, not only ignored by the mass public, but also legally condoned by necropolitical, neoliberal government structures. The settler-colonial countries of Australia, Canada, Brazil and the United States of America supply ample case studies in which to situate police brutality firmly in the necropolitical space