What really makes us safe? From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice for Gender-based Violence

Melanie Brazzell
Sociology
UC Santa Barbara

Black Lives Matter mobilizations and police defunding give renewed urgency to the question of alternatives to police and prisons. This dissertation examines the transformative justice (TJ) movement’s community-based alternatives to prison and policing for gender-based violence. Through participatory qualitative research, the study provides a historical account of the movement, an ethnographic overview of its key practices, and a theory of its principles.

Using original archival research, participant observation, and interviews, the dissertation maps the emergence of TJ in the 2000s in five key cities under the leadership of feminists of color. These leaders rejected the anti-violence movement’s co-optation into a racialized law-and-order politics of “carceral feminism” and bridged movements against both state and interpersonal violence, racism and sexism, effecting a revitalization of the anti-violence movement.

The study asks: What are the central practices and underlying principles that constitute the TJ approach to gender-based violence? How do these differ from the carceral feminist practices and principles, whose four main themes—violence, perpetrator responsibility, survivor safety, and justice—this study contrasts?

Image credit: Andrea Marcos