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The Transformative Justice Project

“Individual accountability is not a substitute for systemic change.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

What is this project's aim?

Through the Transformative Justice Project, team Imaara aspires to ethically engage in research on transformative justice, a study that can potentially inform policy and law making, training, and education surrounding sexual and gender-based violence prevention. 

What is transformative justice & why is it important?

As a political method and framework to address violence, abuse, and harm, transformative justice can be beneficial to communities, systems and services in the following ways: 

  • Transformative justice approaches violence with the perspective of reducing harm and not creating more violence out of existing forms of harm. 

  • Transformative justice addresses the factors that facilitate trauma and the root causes for sexual and gender-based violence to occur. 

  • It acknowledges that sexual violence is deeply rooted in capitalism, poverty, trauma, isolation, heterosexism, cis-sexism, white supremacy, misogyny, ableism, mass incarceration, displacement, war, gender oppression, xenophobia, etc. 

  • It acknowledges that communities have a collective responsibility in perpetrating violence.

  • Transformative justice  aims to mend the harm that has already been created and continues to exist. 

  • Healing, accountability, resilience, and safety for everyone is propagated through transformative justice. 

  • Transformative justice strives to support survivors or victims who have been harmed. 

  • Transformative justice strives to reform the person or group of people who have caused harm and encourages accountability. 

  • Transformative justice encourages communities to take accountability for any harm members were complicit in and includes capacity building for community members to be active bystanders. 

References: 

Discover restorative and transformative justice. (n.d.).  Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton. Retrieved May 30, 2023 from https://www.sace.ca/learn/restorative-and-transformative-justice/

Mingus, M. (2019). Transformative Justice: A Brief Description. Transform harm: A resource hub for ending violence. https://transformharm.org/tj_resource/transformative-justice-a-brief-description/

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