Tag: transformative justice

I Really Just Hate Punitive Justice

I feel like one common assumption we really need to fucking kill is the assumption that suffering somehow improves people, or like is either morally redemptive or improving. The fact that we talk about punitive “justice” as paying for a crime, or paying your “debt to society”? How does imprisonment or punishment or suffering “pay” anyone ANYTHING?

Like there are two things you can do to deal with people who do damage to other people 1. You can take evidence based steps to rehabilitate them and make it so they’re not likely to be a danger 2. If you can’t rehabilitate them which y’ know we can’t with some people yet (the Charles Mansons of the world) you can get them into a situation where they can’t cause further harm.

Punishment does nothing but indulge our worst impulses

You Know, It Makes Me Really Uncomfortable

When people kick people out of organizations for admitting to wrongdoing, when people don’t believe in the possibility of redemption because that means you’re going to leave the ones who lie about it, the ones who will deny to the grave that they did something wrong.

People screw up, people do sexist shit, people screw up consent because we live in a society that doesn’t teach people to get consent properly, and that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who are irredeemable, my rapist and abuser will deny that he did anything wrong till the end of his days, he will deny that it happened.  He is the person who needs to be expelled, not the person who didn’t ask consent explicitly enough and stopped when they were told no, and went through the accountability process and admits to all of this and would never do it again, but so many people will expel the person who admits to doing something wrong and keep the unrepentant monster, because the latter doesn’t admit to being wrong.

Kicking out working class QPOC who used fucked up language once, and did the accountability process and admits it freely and keeping the guy who covers up his emotional and physical abuse of his partner is vile.

I believe in transformative justice.  I believe deeply in the possibility of redemption and people who don’t scare the daylights out of me.