What is Transformative Justice?

Summary

In this engaging dialogue, various experts unpack the concept of Transformative Justice (TJ), a progressive framework aiming to address harm by understanding and changing the conditions that allow it to occur. They contrast it with punitive and restorative justice systems, emphasizing TJ's focus on community response and healing, devoid of state intervention. The discussion highlights the importance of addressing systemic dynamics, encouraging personal accountability, and fostering preventive mechanisms through community resilience and communication skills.

Highlights

• Transformative Justice breaks free from traditional punitive systems and looks at harm's root causes to prevent recurrence. 🚫
• It encourages community-driven responses, avoiding state systems like police and prisons, focusing instead on collective healing. 🏘️
• The conversation touches on the importance of skills like good communication and consent, crucial for preventing violence at its core. 🎤
• Acknowledges that addressing minor incidents effectively can prevent more severe harm in the future. 🔍
• Emphasizes learning from marginalized communities who have thrived through self-reliance and internal justice systems. 🌈

Key Takeaways

• Transformative Justice (TJ) goes deeper than punitive and restorative justice by addressing systemic roots of harm. 🌱
• TJ focuses on community involvement and healing rather than relying on state mechanisms like prisons and police. 🤝
• Promotes the development of skills like communication and accountability, starting from small daily practices to prevent larger harms. 🗣️
• TJ emphasizes the importance of understanding context and systemic contributions to violence rather than just punishing individuals. 🧠
• This justice framework highlights the practices of marginalized communities who have long relied on internal support systems. 🌍

Overview

Transformative Justice (TJ) is a forward-thinking approach that digs into the root causes of harm to prevent its recurrence. Unlike punitive justice, which focuses on punishment, or restorative justice, which seeks to repair harms, TJ aims to change the overarching conditions that allow harm to occur. It’s about uprooting and addressing the systemic issues at play, ensuring the community plays a central role in addressing and healing from these harms without state involvement.

The conversation between experts brings out the essence of TJ as a community-centered process. It does away with reliance on external systems like prisons and the legal framework, instead fostering internal accountability and trust. This approach seeks to cultivate environments of resilience, safety, and healing, urging individuals to look beyond immediate reactions of revenge or hopelessness.

Additionally, the panel highlights the work already being done by marginalized communities to practice forms of TJ without recognizing it by that name. This entails leaning on communal ties and practices that have supported survival against systemic violence. The importance of instilling skills such as effective communication and a culture of accountability in everyday life is underlined, setting the foundation for transformative responses to broader societal issues.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Transformative Justice In the chapter titled 'Introduction to Transformative Justice', adrienne maree brown discusses the concept of transformative justice by contrasting it with the more familiar punitive justice system. She describes how most people have been socialized into a system where harm is met with punishment, often involving exclusion from the community. Examples include expulsion, detention, suspension, or time outs. This approach underscores the principle of removal rather than restoration.
• 01:00 - 02:30: The Roots of Transformative Justice The chapter "The Roots of Transformative Justice" delves into the concept of harm and accountability. It highlights that everyone has either experienced harm or been part of witnessing it within communities. The narrative suggests that as individuals grow, they encounter different societal responses to harm, such as imprisonment or community exclusion. These systemic responses are seen as part of a larger societal process. The discussion then transitions into restorative justice, indicating it as a positive step towards healing and restoring relationships after harm has occurred.
• 02:30 - 05:00: Defining Transformative Justice The chapter delves into the concept of transformative justice, a framework that challenges traditional notions of justice that aim to restore previous conditions following a harm. The narrative highlights a scenario where an individual whose purse was stolen receives an apology and the perpetrator performs community service, intending to restore the situation to its prior state. However, the text argues that if the original conditions were inherently unjust, simply reverting to them is insufficient. Transformative justice seeks not just to address the immediate harm but also to rectify and improve the underlying conditions that allowed the injustice to occur in the first place.
• 05:00 - 07:30: Community and Systemic Dynamics This chapter delves into the concept of addressing harm at its root by questioning and altering the fundamental systems that allow it to perpetuate. It argues for transformative justice approaches, pointing out the limitations of the state, which often focuses on punitive measures rather than rehabilitation or system transformation. The chapter emphasizes community collaboration in holding each other accountable, rather than relying on the state to facilitate deep and meaningful change.
• 07:30 - 10:00: Practices and Principles of Transformative Justice The chapter explores the core concepts of transformative justice, emphasizing the belief in the possibility of personal transformation. Transformative justice is defined as a method of responding to violence and harm in ways that avoid perpetuating further violence and trauma. The chapter discusses the principles of addressing harm without inflicting additional pain, thereby promoting healing and restoration.
• 10:00 - 12:30: Education and Prevention The chapter 'Education and Prevention' discusses the importance of addressing violence within communities from a non-oppressive standpoint. It focuses on alternatives to traditional systems of violence and oppression such as the police, prisons, and other legal systems. The text emphasizes the need to move away from reinforcing harmful gender norms and vigilantism, advocating for methods that do not perpetuate systemic or normalized violence.
• 12:30 - 15:00: Support and Community Resilience The chapter titled 'Support and Community Resilience' explores the concept of transformative justice, which involves not only addressing harm between individuals but also understanding and addressing the underlying dynamics and conditions within a community that allow such harm to occur. It emphasizes creating and cultivating aspects like resilience, safety, healing, and connection to prevent violence and foster community resilience.

What is Transformative Justice? Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 adrienne maree brown: So, when I'm trying to explain transformative justice to people, I usually back away from, I don't go straight at, "Okay, this is transformative justice." I usually actually go back to punitive justice. I start out with, like, what we're used to and what we've been socialized into is punitive justice, and then I ask people, if I'm in a room full of people, even, you know, a room full of friends, I'd be, like, "How many of you grew up in an experience where you "were punished when harm happened?" And I give examples. "You were expelled, you were put in detention, "you had suspension, you were put in time out, "but the main move was you were removed from community
• 00:30 - 01:00 "in some way because you've done harm." And people are, like, "Oh, yeah," you know, either everyone either has that experience or they were a part of spaces where they saw that experience, and then I'm, like, "You know, we age, we grow that up so that then, "you go into prison or you get the death penalty, "or you get canceled from your community," right? That same, it's the same process. So, we live in, that's what we're swimming in. And then I talk about restorative justice as a steps in the right direction, right? It's, like, harm has happened. How do we restore ourselves back to that relationship
• 01:00 - 01:30 that existed before the harm happened? So, I'm like, someone stole your purse. You get an apology. They do some community service. Hopefully we return to, like, where we were, but for me, I always say that doesn't go far enough because if the original conditions were unjust, then returning to those original conditions is not actually justice, right? You're just gonna have someone who's, like, "Great, now I returned everything to you. "I still don't have anything, and I'm still hungry, "and I still need something." So, I'm like, so we need to go further. So, to me, transformative justice, the first aspect of it
• 01:30 - 02:00 is that it goes all the way down to the root system of the harm and says, "How do we change, heal, "transform, pull this up? "What do we need to do at the root system "so that this harm is no longer possible?" Like, what we're trying to do is stop this harm from ever being possible again. And then how do we understand that the state is so committed to punitive justice? So, the state is not gonna be able to engage in transformative justice with us. So we don't go to the state to do this kind of deep work. And then how do we turn towards each other to hold
• 02:00 - 02:30 this space, and in that turning to each other, we have to say, "I believe you can transform." Mia Mingus: The bare bones way I describe transformative justice to just anybody that I meet randomly is that it's a way of responding to violence and harm without creating more violence and harm. That's bare bones. How do we, what would it look like to respond to harm in a way that doesn't create more trauma, more pain, more harm. And then after that, I would also say the way that I talk about it is that it is a way to respond
• 02:30 - 03:00 to violence within our own communities, which feels really important, so it's not this kind of missionary thing, in a way that doesn't rely on violence and state and oppressive systems, so things like police, prisons, the criminal legal system, the court system, ICE, the foster care system, and it also doesn't rely on normalized violence and systemic violence like reinforcing harmful gender norms or vigilantism, but that it also, most importantly,
• 03:00 - 03:30 helps to create and cultivate the very things that we know help to prevent violence. So things like resilience, safety, healing, connection, all of those things. Stas Schmiedt: The way that I usually describe transformative justice is addressing harm, but also understanding why that harm happened, and addressing the underlying dynamics that created conditions for this harm to happen in the first place. And so it's not just addressing the harm between two or more people, but addressing the conditions of the community that allowed for that to be normal.
• 03:30 - 04:00 Ann Russo: Transformative justice asks us not only about accountability for the individual for the harm that's been caused, but to think more largely about how all of us may have contributed, or are contributing, or are part of these systems that create the harm that we're trying to address. Esteban Kelly: It distributes the culpability a little bit. Which isn't to say, again, that it's even, but everyone holds some amount. Everyone holds some amount. You know, who, what environment enabled the silencing
• 04:00 - 04:30 to go on such that this pattern was able to continue until a crisis? You know, what allowed things to escalate? What were the subtle hints around male supremacy and sexism and white supremacy or different forms of class power that gave people hidden messages that this was acceptable or that we're not gonna intervene or that we're not, it's not of a scale yet that we're gonna intervene and say something now
• 04:30 - 05:00 to cut it out or to transform, waiting 'til things get to a point of crisis? Stas Schmiedt: I think that any case that's presented to us, it's very, very likely that other people in that community are experiencing similar things, maybe not to that degree or maybe not with that language. And it's actually by addressing what's happening between those people that you can understand the underlying dynamics and create tools and practices to address those for other people as well. And I think our interpretation of transformative justice also includes, like, most community organizing.
• 05:00 - 05:30 I feel like most things that folks are doing to shift the underlying dynamics of violence in our society are making more resilient and accountable communities as well, are making it so that people are less likely to be harmful. And so we have a very open interpretation of what transformative justice is. Esteban Kelly: And so, instead of zooming in on this harm, this transgression, which is what the criminal legal system looks at and then coming up with a punishment for it, it zooms out, and it's like, "What's all the context?
• 05:30 - 06:00 "What's the environment in which this was allowed to happen, "and how does that inform what needs to be explored "as we work on healing and as we work to transform "not just the person who holds the disproportionate amount "of responsibility for causing harm or inflicting harm "or exacerbating patterns of harm?" But ideally, on the other side of our transformative justice process, we've explored enough things
• 06:00 - 06:30 that the environment has shifted. Mia Mingus: I mean, to me it means that we actively think about every response that we have as an opportunity to break generational cycles of harm and violence. That we actually think beyond just individual incidences and understand both the micro and the macro, both the individual and the collective. How do we operate in a more long-term understanding of violence, a more generational understanding of violence? So that, you know, that we move past just the immediacy
• 06:30 - 07:00 of a feeling of revenge, or that we need to get back at somebody, for example, or a feeling of hopelessness, to actually say, "This is an opportunity "that I can respond to this. "I can either respond to it with more violence "and harm, right, and escalate it, "or I can take this opportunity to figure out "how do I deescalate this, and what would that look like?" Ann Russo: For me, transformative justice is a, like, a way, a practice that I feel like is a, a life practice, like, how do I, because harm is happening everywhere,
• 07:00 - 07:30 from, you know, really little to really egregious, and so, if we're really thinking about this, how can we really think about prevention? How can we really think about building relationships where we really encourage each other to take accountability for small things, not only the large? And I think that's preventative to larger, more egregious harms. Mia Mingus: Handling the small things and addressing them well can actually help to prevent the big things. And so I get really excited around, like, the nerdy things
• 07:30 - 08:00 of, like, going back to the basics and starting with, like, how do we build basic communication skills? How do we build the skill set to be able to give a good apology? What does it look like to be able to, you know, have generative conflict with the people in our everyday lives? How do we talk about accountability and help and support each other to heal with the people in our everyday lives? That, those things make me excited. How do we teach our children about consent and accountability? How do we show up for the youth
• 08:00 - 08:30 and the children in our lives? And I know it doesn't, it seems less connected to transformative justice, 'cause when we talk about TJ, everyone goes to, like, automatically, the most horrific forms of violence and the big forms of violence, but, you know, I think that so much of our work is doing, you know, building the foundation that we need for transformative justice. And if we all just rush always to the crisis, we miss the more sustainable, everyday things that to me actually are,
• 08:30 - 09:00 when they ripple out, have a bigger, are a bigger force that can change things. Martina Kartman: Transformative justice is just the things we do to support each other to survive in this world, from the small things to the big things, like what we do for the people in our communities to help us survive violence. And I think of it as, so, transformative justice, [clears throat] as both about how we prevent violence, how we intervene in violence, and then how we support each other in the aftermath of violence through healing or accountability or both. And it's all of those things.
• 09:00 - 09:30 Priya Rai: I really think about the generations of people who have been doing, who have always been doing this, whether they, even though they didn't call it transformative justice. And I just wanna lift up all the work of immigrants, queer people of color, disabled folks, sex workers, the people who have never been able to rely on folks outside of their communities. Shira Hassan: What I want people to hear when they hear TJ is that this is, this is a set of practices
• 09:30 - 10:00 that happens outside of the state. So this is not something that you can take into schools. I want people to take the values into schools, or I want people to take the values into broader institutional work. And those values are around ending prisons and around transforming our understanding of accountability and disconnecting the idea of punishment and justice. But I want people
• 10:00 - 10:30 to know that TJ has to happen outside the state. It is not something that we can just turn into another systemic response. (music)