Transformative Justice

"Form a survivor support team; form an accountability team; defining the relationship b/w teams; create TJ plan; evaluating lessons learned".

What would we do if someone is harmed and there were no cops, nor prisons? [CW: s*xual violence]⠀
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Transformative Justice (TJ) is a political framework and approach for responding to violence, harm and abuse. At its most basic, it seeks to respond to violence without creating more violence and/or engaging in harm reduction to lessen the violence.⠀
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Aims of TJ:

1) Do not rely on the state (e.g. police, prisons, the criminal legal system, RCMP, Border Services, foster care system;

2) Do not reinforce/perpetuate violence (through oppression, retribution, or vigilantism; and most importantly,

3) Center focus and work in healing, accountability, resilience, and real safety for all people.⠀
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What do the steps in the image mean?⠀
These steps outline the actions that were taken by the group The Chrysalis Collective when a member of their community was r*ped by an acquaintance. The steps essentially focus on ensuring that the survivor had a group of allies (survivor support team) with unified goal in addressing the harm done, and holding the person who caused harm accountable/responsible (with an accountability team). ⠀
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The survivor support team developed a TJ plan (e.g., their goals, ideas for how to approach the person who caused harm, backlash precautions, guidelines for meeting with the person who caused harm). Whereas, the accountability team showed up to the planned meeting to ensure that the survivor's and the community's needs were met, provide the person who caused harm with an explanation of the harm caused, etc. The accountability team also separately ensured that the person who caused harm had friends to process with after meeting with the survivor support team. The aim of such meetings and organizing to focus on the survivor's experiences and involving the person who caused harm to be involved in problem-solving and doing assignments on various anti-oppression trainings/ideas.⠀

Source: Beautiful, Difficult, Powerful: Ending S*xual Assault Through Transformative Justice and TransformHarm.org⠀