Transformative Justice

In the UK and elsewhere, restorative justice and policing are core components of a range of university programmes; however, currently no such text exists on the intersection of these two areas of study. This book draws together these diverse theoretical perspectives to provide an innovative, knowledge-rich text that is essential reading for all those engaged with the evolution and practice of restorative policing.

Restorative Policing surveys the twenty-five year history of restorative policing practice, during which its use and influence over criminal justice has slowly grown. It then situates this experience within a criminological discussion about neo-liberal responses to crime control. There has been insufficient debate about how the concepts of ‘restorative justice’ and ‘policing’ sit alongside each other and how they may be connected or disconnected in theoretical and conceptual terms. The book seeks to fill this gap through an exploration of concepts, theory, policy and practice. In doing so, the authors make a case for a more transformative vision of restorative policing that can impact positively upon the shape and practice of policing and outline a framework for the implementation of such a strategy.

This pathbreaking book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on restorative justice, policing and crime control, as well as professionals interested in the implementation of restorative practices in the police force.

This collection of essays presents to the reader leading voices within food justice, environmental justice, and school-to-prison pipeline movements. While many schools, community organizers, professors, politicians, unions, teachers, parents, youth, social workers, and youth advocates are focusing on curriculum, discipline policies, policing practices, incarceration demographics, and diversity of staff, the authors of this book argue that even if all those issues are addressed, healthy food and living environment are fundamental to the emancipation of youth. This book is for anyone who wants to truly understand the school-to-prison pipeline as well as those interested in peace, social justice, environmentalism, racial justice, youth advocacy, transformative justice, food, veganism, and economic justice.

This mini-zine (foldable media + text) was published at http://decolonialfutures.net. It is a pedagogical experiment that invites conversations about our collective existence in a planet facing unprecedented crises. Each side presents a social cartography that makes up a theory-of-change. Every theory of change is made up of a diagnosis of the present, and a proposition about a horizon for change. On one side, the social cartography “The House Modernity Built” offers a diagnosis of the present focusing on a modern/colonial global imaginary in which being is reduced to knowing, profits take precedent over people, the earth is treated as a resource rather than a living relation, and the shiny promises of states, markets, and Western reason are subsidized by the disavowed harms of impoverishment, genocide, and environmental destruction. On the other side of the zine, the social cartography “In Earth’s CARE” invites conversations about the possibility of setting horizons of hope beyond the house that modernity built. Through an earth centered metaphor, it proposes that ecological and economic justice (mushrooms) are not viable without cognitive, affective and relational justice (healthy mycelium). Together the social cartographies point to the need for a different kind of education where we see ourselves as part of a wider metabolism and where we learn to hospice modernity, learning from its recurrent mistakes, in order to open our imaginaries and make only new mistakes as we assist with the birth of something new, undefined, and potentially, but not necessarily, wiser.

Building on recent feminist scholarship on the complicity of feminist antiviolence movements in the build up of mass incarceration, this essay analyzes the epistemic occupation of feminist antiviolence work by carceral logic, taking the Gender-Responsive Justice and Community Accountability movements as countervailing examples. Both strategies claim to be a feminist response to violence. Gender-Responsive Justice arises from feminist criminology and has genealogical roots in the American prison reformatory movement. Community Accountability stems from grassroots intersectional and decolonial feminisms that are fundamentally at odds with the professionalization and state-centrism of the mainstream antiviolence movement. We argue that Gender-Responsive Justice is a form of carceral humanism that repackages carceral control as the caring provision of social services, while Community Accountability advances a radically creative abolitionist and decolonial project of an irreducibly epistemological order.

This chapter focuses on two important contentions in the work of/on Wynter: First, it includes a productive engagement with her understandings of feminism, gender and patriarchy as it pertains to the overrepresentation of Man and in its relation to women of color and decolonial feminisms. Second, the authors examine her articulation of the studia humanitatis and by extension literature as a critical site for radical transformation and liberatory imagination. This text tracks how Wynter’s critique of mainstream liberal feminism has provided a language for dismissing the concerns articulated by and work produced by women of color, while also highlighting the deep resonances between the substantive contributions of women of color and decolonial feminisms and Wynter’s overall project. The chapter illustrates how within the heterogeneous body of activism, political thought, and poetics produced by women of color and decolonial feminisms there has been a long history of taking back the “Word,” in a way that seeks to create new value systems and build relations anew beyond those established through colonization and slavery and beyond those that serve to bolster “Man.”

Acid violence is embedded in larger macro political and economic structures that sustain gender domination and perpetuate new forms of gender inequality. This article argues that increasing incidences of acid violence in South Asia and especially in India would benefit from the structural analysis that takes into account impacts from socio-economic structures that reinforce gender inequality. In contemplating a systemic redress mechanism, structural analysis is used to enlarge legal norms. The article proposes a model of transformative justice that involves centrality of State responsibility as a catalyst for social change.

We are seeking submissions for a collection of essays titled Beyond Equity Into Justice: Bringing Theory Into Practice at Community Colleges. This edited volume addresses how our changing attitudes towards serving all student populations has shifted the pedagogical and relational approaches used by faculty, staff, and administrators at community colleges. Attitudes about equality, equity, and justice are more intentional and integral to the evolution of the work we do as educators. Dr. Diane K. Troyer, Ph.D., educational consultant and leadership coach for Achieving the Dream states, “The mission of America’s community colleges is focused on three areas of commitment: access, responsiveness to community need, and equity.” The editors of this volume propose that the work of community colleges has expanded to include going beyond equity into providing a true barrier-free learning environment for students, one that is attuned to justice. Though the popular internet meme that illustrates the difference between equality and equity has become a popular mantra of educational institutions nationally, educators have been slow to adopt the evolution of the meme to include justice or liberation. Often, scholarship about social and educational inequities and oppression remain theoretical and housed in the university tier of our stratified higher educational system. For busy, overworked community college instructors, staff, and administrators, practical strategies are needed to bring theory into practice.

We seek essays that embrace innovative practices that promote moving beyond equity to justice in our classrooms, colleges, and communities. Specifically, we seek submissions that examine practices that restore justice to students that are “othered” and marginalized. We also invite the submission of essays that discuss innovation, intervention and transformation both inside and outside of the classroom. We seek approaches that are theoretical, anecdotal, and deeply pedagogical.

Essays might address questions such as the following: How are educators in community colleges bringing opportunities to underserved communities in an effort to be equitable and just under the social justice mission of community colleges? What practices both in and out of the classroom can move community colleges practices beyond equity and into justice and liberation? How do we turn classrooms into sites of productivity and innovation, “collaboration and contestation” (Bhabha), belonging and safe spaces? What does transformative justice mean to educators, students, and the community?

Possible essay topics include, but are not limited to:
·      Classroom and teaching strategies and practices
·      Student support services
·      Academic interventions
·      Curriculum choices and development
·      Restorative and healing practices
·      Wrap-around services
·      Activism and global perspectives
·      Collaborations and solidarities
·      Community-building and liberation
·      Transformative Justice
·      Student Perspectives


If interested, please email a brief biography and 500-word abstract to Sobia Khan and Kendra Unruh at beyondequityjustice@gmail.com by March 31, 2020. In the subject line for the email, please write “Proposal for Beyond Equity.” The deadline for 5000-7000 word essays from accepted abstracts will be September 7, 2020.Thank you in advance for your interest.

Contact Info:
Kendra Unruh, Ph.D.
English Professor
Richland College
Dallas, TX

Sobia Khan, Ph.D.
Dean for Academic Success
San Antonio College
San Antonio, TX