Community Accountability, Restorative Justice, and Transformative Justice

This page (which you can share with the shortlink: http://bit.ly/accountabilityjustice) focuses on discussing forms of addressing harm that ask us to move beyond (and away) from state responses to violence. Instead the frameworks below offer approaches that—among other things—center survivor needs, reject a politic of disposability, encourage community collaboration and reintegration versus isolation, focus on harms versus “broken rules,” aim to transform the conditions that caused the harm in the first place, and honor the humanity of all involved (rather than just the survivors’).  

Below I’ve included the following sections:

  • Introductory Definitions
  • Framework Primers
  • Personal Advice
  • My Interviews/Recordings
  • Useful Books
  • Online Resource Banks, Toolkits, & Media
  • Organizations Doing Relevant Work
  • People You Should Know

Introductory Definitions:

Restorative Justice (RJ) is a community-based approach to dealing with harm that centers the dignity of all involved parties, the importance of healing and dialogue, and relies on non-punitive solutions. Of the three frames and practices described here, RJ is the one more widely known and whose approaches are integrated into places like schools and sometimes offered as alternatives to the legal system. Though transformed in many ways, most RJ practices are rooted in or adapted from a constellation of indigenous practices in the U.S, Canada, and New Zealand. Amidst all this, there has been rampant cultural appropriation and misuse, especially in DV/SA advocacy circles.

Key questions an RJ approach centers:

  • Who has been harmed? (rather than the “Who is the victim?” question under a legal frame)
  • What are their needs? If you don’t know their needs directly, what do you think/gather/assume they might be and what’s informing these thoughts?
  • Whose obligations are these? 
  • Who has a stake in this situation?
  • What are the causes? How did the community and larger social factors allow/encourage this to happen?

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. TJ can be thought of as a way of “making things right,” getting in “right relation,” or creating justice together. Transformative justice responses and interventions 1) do not rely on the state (e.g. police, prisons, the criminal legal system, I.C.E., foster care system (though some TJ responses do rely on or incorporate social services like counseling);  2) do not reinforce or perpetuate violence such as oppressive norms or vigilantism; and most importantly, 3) actively cultivate the things we know prevent violence such as healing, accountability, resilience, and safety for all involved. (source – Mia Mingus, author) 

Key questions a TJ approach centers:

  • How are we working toward and/or affirming the safety, healing, and agency of the survivor(s)?
  • How are we working toward and/or affirming the accountability and transformation for those who abuse?
    How are we working toward and/or affirming a community response and community accountability? (both in the sense of accountability TO community and FROM community, response TO community and FROM community)
  • How are we working toward and/or affirming a transformation of the social conditions that created and perpetuated these instances of harm?

Community accountability (CA) is a community-based strategy, rather than a police/prison-based strategy, to address violence within our communities. Community accountability is a process in which a community – a group of friends, a family, a church, a workplace, an apartment complex, a neighborhood, etc – work together. (source: INCITE!) So, for some people, this can be an umbrella term that can encompass aspects of RJ and TJ, but can also be separate and distinct.

Key actions of CA (according to INCITE!):

  • Create and affirm values & practices that resist abuse and oppression and encourage safety, support, and accountability
  • Develop sustainable strategies to address community members’ abusive behavior, creating a process for them to account for their actions and transform their behavior
  • Commit to ongoing development of all members of the community, and the community itself, to transform the political conditions that reinforce oppression and violence
  • Provide safety & support to community members who are violently targeted that respects their self-determination

Framework Primers:

Personal Advice:

  • Always acknowledge, thank, cite, and support your elders and teachers in this work, both those who taught you directly and indirectly.
  • If you’re getting or recommending a consultant or circle-keeper, here are some questions to ask them.
  • Deeply consider the impact of white supremacy in your understanding and systems. So many of these frameworks have been developed by Black and Indigenous people, that if you’re not of those communities and NOT integrating reparations, acknowledgement, and material support for BIPOC communities…you should fix that ASAP.
  • Take time to build your skills before attempting any community justice processes, especially if they are large, public, and complex.
  • Get buddies to explore this with you. Community accountability requires, you guessed it, community! And this needs to happen at a micro level, not just a micro level. Start integrating these principles.
  • Know that this WILL BE MESSY AND ONGOING WORK. You will mess it up, and you will mess it up again. This isn’t an excuse to give up or stop making amends. Get good at apologies, repair, and owning your shit. 
  • Write out your core values and use them as filters for your work. Check in regularly to see if and how you’re holding true to them.
  • Learn how to better regulate your own nervous system and come down from feeling dissociated, agitated, or frozen.
  • Stop looking for “the point by point list of what to do” because there isn’t one. The simultaneous beauty and challenge of this work is that it needs to be tailored to the communities in which it’s being practiced. However, don’t reinvent the wheel—many of us have been doing this for years and there’s ample documentation to get you started off on the right foot.
  • Remember that doing this work means unlearning a TON of things you’ve been taught, probably your whole life. This is a process more than a destination. It will likely involve shock, pain, confusion, and relapse. That’s normal. Stick with it anyway. 
  • Pace yourself—don’t try to rush through things. “Move at the speed of trust,” as adrienne maree brown says.

My Interviews/Recordings:

Below are some interviews where I’ve discussed RJ/TJ/CA, but be aware I post a lot about these issues on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram (on main and my story) too. You can follow along with the hashtag when people live-tweeted a session I co-presented at the last Playground Conference in Toronto, or my panel back in 2016 at the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit, for example!

07/02/2020 — Breaking the cycle of harm by Talia Gruber, a really gorgeous article weaving history, interviews with various practitioners (myself included), personal narrative, and actionable advice.

04/2020 — the Explore More Summit, where I did a session covering topics such as ambition, the relationships between sex and capitalism, accountability, justice as an ongoing process that’s both internal and external, and dreams of a future we could build.

03/14/20 — I Reported My Rapist to His Bosses. Now They Want Me to Meet With Him. by Stoya for Slate. The full text of what I sent and some considerations I suggested below, since the redacted version misses some key points:

First of all, a restorative justice process can’t happen without the survivor. So I’m curious what kind of process this group is even doing with the harming party if the person who wrote in isn’t involved…? Are they doing an RJ process with this guy for other harms to other people…? This could be a semantic error, because  community accountability work can indeed happen without a survivor, and there are parts of transformative justice that can be done without a survivor, but I’m immediately concerned about this. 

It’s also unclear where these people live and if they’re in the same communities still? Or if they’re more geographically separated? Statistically, when serial abuse includes strangling, there is a higher level of danger and lethality so this is a delicate situation and it’s critical to center the safety of the person writing in.

My suggestions to the person writing in:

Center your safety and mental wellbeing. Ensure you have supports in case your traumas get reactivated. If you choose to participate in a process, tell key people in your life such as your therapist and best friends so that they can check in with you and pay attention to if there are any negative changes in your life, behavior, and such. If you don’t want to participate in a process, that’s okay. If you don’t feel safe engaging with this person, that’s understandable. You shouldn’t have to work to heal this person; that’s not your job. But if you do feel you have a sense of duty to the community and to other people who may be harmed in the future, there is likely a way to do that.

Consider how much of your story you are interested in sharing, with whom, and to what ends. What do you want the outcome to be? How realistic is that? What are the possible unintended consequences of sharing in certain ways or in certain spaces? Are there ways to mitigate any negative impacts or unintended outcomes? Are there concerns that this guy may retaliate, and if so, how? Does he still have access to the explicit video he took of you or was that destroyed? Write down your story if possible so you don’t have to repeat it verbally each time unless you want to do so. If you choose to share, consider asking a friend (or friends!) to help you share information or act as a contact so you don’t have to do it alone.

Filing a report with the police doesn’t have to be incompatible with being involved in some form of community accountability. While the idea behind those non-carceral approaches is that we take power into our own hands rather than give that power to the state, sadly, we still live in a world that is primarily carceral, and where those things can be important in the case of people who serially harm to this degree and intensity. Consider what the goal is with filing.

Learn a bit more about what restorative justice is, and what other things may be available (such as transformative justice, or community accountability work overall). Here’s a Twitter thread where I share some valuable resources. See how this relates to your life, how it aligns with your needs and values.

Ask (or have a proxy do so) who the people are who would be conducting the RJ process, what their experience with RJ is (e.g. when have they done this before, what trainings have they had, etc.), if they have references, what they see as the goals of a process, what the values underlying the process are/might be, and what they see as your role or importance/value in it. More directly, you can raise your concerns about this person’s use of social justice language as a smokescreen, and ask how they plan to address or be vigilant about that. You can ask them that even if they have done RJ work before, if they’ve done it around issues of sexual harm and abuse or manipulation before. You can ask what their trauma training is, or what experience they have in dealing with issues of domestic violence. Doing RJ work for a burglary is different than for issues like this. Don’t just evaluate these answers yourself—get someone else to help you take a look at these. If you’re not already knowledgeable about RJ or some of these other things, it can be hard to evaluate someone’s answers and qualifications. Consider reaching out to a more well-known practitioner for a consult or simply google the names you’re given to see if they pop up anywhere. If their answers seem messy, insufficient, etc, be careful. Don’t engage unless you feel like you’re able to access support and safety because this sort of thing even when well done can reactivate old wounds. When messily done, it can be straight-up retraumatizing and even life-endangering.

Beyond this, has the guy been notified about an RJ process or intentions for that? How does the organization plan to safeguard your privacy and safety? What are their values in the process?

02/21/2019 — Interview titled “Episode 263: Aida Manduley on accountability and transformative justice” for the Sex Gets Real podcast with Dawn Serra. This is part 3 of a series exploring emotional abuse, accountability, and different ways of being in community with each other. We also talk about how White supremacy impacts the ways we show up in life, the false promises made to cis men, and why grief work is crucial to alternative justice practices and accountability.

07/11/2017 — Interview titled “Episode 105: Webs of Connection and Change with Aida Manduley” for the Passion and Soul Podcast with Lee Harrington, where here we have a conversation about all things from social justice and authenticity to gardening, with a focus on tools for change after harming others, as well as tools for connecting with ancestors of both blood and life journey.

07/10/2017 — Interview titled “Sex and Social Justice with Aida Manduley: Episode 246” of the Speaking of Sex Podcast where we cover intersectionality, the importance of understanding the history of racial and sexual oppression, self care as resistance, and radical love as a framework.

02/2017 — the Explore More Summit, where I did a session covering topics such as gender journeys, transformative justice, spirituality, and more (watch a trailer for it here).

02/03/2016 — Interview for Briefs episode titled “Heroes, Monsters, and David Bowie” on Sex for Smart People. Discussed radical love, restorative/transformative justice, and the community response to David Bowie’s death as well as my viral article on the aftermath.

Useful Books & Zines: 

Some of the books below are also described in greater length on my recommended books list. Remain critical and curious as you read these; they all have their pros/cons and not-so-great-areas <3

Online Resource Banks, Toolkits, & Media:

Organizations & Collectives Doing Relevant Work:

People You Should Know:

I could not presume to list all the amazing people doing this work, and the more I do this work the more people I meet. It’s my hope that these names (and those earlier in the page!) give you a starting point, a sampler of varied cultures, approaches, and styles of this work so you can learn more and go from there. I’ve focused on uplifting folks of color doing this, intentionally, but the list is broadly multiracial. Also please note: I don’t update this section too much, save for broken links, so please excuse any outdated bios!

Sonya Shah

Sonya Shah, MFA has 20 years experience in social justice education. She has been an associate professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies for ten years, and a facilitator of restorative justice processes in her family, community, schools and prison settings.

Mia Mingus

Mia Mingus is a writer, educator and community organizer for disability justice and transformative justice. She is a founding core-member of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC), a local collective working to build and support transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse that do not rely on the state.

Johonna Turner

Johonna Turner is Assistant Professor of Restorative Justice and Peacebuilding at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and for 15 + years, she has worked to cultivate transformational approaches to safety and justice.

sujatha baliga

sujatha baliga’s work is characterized by an equal dedication to crime survivors and people who’ve caused harm. A former victim advocate and public defender, today sujatha helps communities implement restorative justice alternatives to juvenile detention and zero-tolerance school discipline policies through the sujata through the Restorative Justice Project.

Sheryl Wilson 

Sheryl has been a practitioner, trainer and educator in restorative justice for over fifteen years She holds both a B.S.  degree in Mediation and Communication Studies and a restorative justice-based Master of Liberal Studies degree from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Mariame Kaba 

Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator and curator whose  work focuses on ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial complex, transformative justice and supporting youth leadership development. Mariame is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots organization with a vision to end youth incarceration.

Troy Williams 

Troy Williams is a Youth Program Development Specialist and Facilitator Trainer for the Victim-Offender Education Group with the Insight Prison Project. He is the founding Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the San Quentin Prison Report (SQPR), an award-winning radio and video production program operated inside the prison. Prior to his release from San Quentin, Troy spent six years facilitating curriculum for the Victim-Offender Education Group and other restorative justice programs.

nuri nusrat 

For the past few years nuri has worked across California to implement pre-charge restorative justice diversion programs that attended to victim-identified needs and support young people arrested for crimes through processes that uphold the humanity and dignity of all affected.

amita swadhin

amita is an educator, storyteller, activist and consultant dedicated to fighting interpersonal and institutional violence. Her commitments to this work stem from her experiences as a genderqueer, femme queer woman of color, daughter of immigrants, and years of abuse by her parents, including eight years of rape by her father.

Fania Davis

Fania Davis is a leading national voice on restorative justice, and is the founder and currently Director of Restorative Justice of Oakland Youth (RJOY). Fania’s research interests include race and restorative justice, social justice and restorative justice, and exploring the Indigenous roots, particularly the African Indigenous roots, of restorative justice.

Shannon Perez-Darby 

Shannon is is a queer, mixed Latina writer, survivor, activist and author of the piece “The Secret Joy of Accountability: Self-accountability as a Building Block for Change” in The Revolution Starts at Home. She has spent 12 years as a community advocate working within LGBTQ communities and communities of color. 

Mimi Kim 

Dr. Kim is a Professor at Cal-State Longbeach researching social movements and organizing, emphasisizing domestic violence and sexual assault in communities of color. She is a long-time advocate in Asian immigrant and refugee communities and remains active in the promotion of community organizing, community accountability and transformative justice approaches.

Aida Manduley

(It’s me! I’ve been in and consulting with accountability pods, spearheaded survivor pods, advised organizations on leading accountability processes, presented at both national and local events about these topics, and given adjacent support as a therapist for people in the midst of these structures.)

Kiyomi Fujikawa 

Kiyomi is the Co-Director of Third Wave Fund and has worked to end gender-based and intimate partner violence within Queer & Trans communities of color since 2001. She was a  Senior Program Associate at the Fund for Trans Generations at Borealis Philanthropy, and the Queer Network Program Coordinator at API Chaya.

Shira Hassan

Shira, among other things, was the Director of Young Women’s Empowerment Project from 2006-2011 and currently works as a consultant and coach, offering program development & design, grassroots fundraising, participatory evaluation/action research and creating sustainable, healing centered and trauma-informed environments for staff through intensive partnering with organizational leaders.

Andy Izenson

Andy is a passionate advocate and educator around alternative family law and family creation, gender and sexuality, and restorative and transformative justice. Andy provides direct services work as an attorney, mediator, consultant, and practitioner of restorative and transformative justice.

Sethu Laxmi Nair 

Sethu is a mediator, coach, and peacemaker managing conflict responses for NYC City government employees at the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution and facilitates Healing Circles at Hidden Water. She has a Bachelors in Women’s Studies from SUNY Purchase and a Masters in Economic and Political Development from Columbia University.

Cameron Rasmussen 

Cameron Rasmussen, LMSW, has worked in program development, program management, and direct service with individuals, families, and communities impacted by incarceration and the child welfare system. He serves on the steering committee of Social Workers against criminalization, a committee of NASW-NYC

The NYC Restorative Justice Directory

This is a directory of organizations and individuals who engage in restorative practices, restorative justice, transformative justice, or who advocate for these practices.

Acknowledgements

Header image by HNewberry on pixabay.

Thanks to Hunter Riley, Sarah Sloane, and Lenni Yessner for your help in organizing the bios and formatting!