Justice Focus Research Articles

We Collect ‘Everything’: A Case Study of a Local Studies Collection in an Australian Public Library

ABSTRACT This paper describes research exploring a local studies collection in an Australian public library. It includes the current collecting practices and paradigms and their impact on what is added to this collection. This research was to discover how contemporary content, including items from rapid response collecting are incorporated in a local studies collection. It uses a social justice approach to investigate how current collecting practices represent the whole of the community in a public library local studies collection to provide multiple stories and perspectives. Ethnography was the research method used to enable in-depth understanding of the collecting practices of one public library. The results of the research show a tendency for library staff to rarely say no to unsolicited donations, as well as a focus on emotional and decision making based on relationships. This led to donations based on relationships and the risk of collecting from cliques and resulted in an increased cataloguing backlog for the local studies collection. The conclusion is that for more of the community to be represented in a public library local studies collection, changes in collecting practices need to be undertaken to include a social justice focus.

The Relationship between the Victim and the Perpetrator in the Mediation Procedure

The victim and the victimizer or the criminal are often found in interactions and various interactive relationships The victim and the victimizer in some cases of victimization are always in some relationships and relationships from before, these relationships and relationships can be of various natures, in most cases they are parental relationships, marital relationships, cohabitation or engagement relationships, family or even neighborly love ties.Restorative justice is an approach to justice oriented towards the possible repair of damage caused by a crime or conflict. An essential element of restorative justice is the active involvement of parties, victims, perpetrators, and when appropriate, community members, who voluntarily come together with the help of a mediator to talk about the harm and its consequences, as well as to identify ways to repair them. Restorative justice aims to bring justice to people and considers participation as an important human value that connects people. The focus of restorative justice is on what people perceive as a fair and safe experience in the phase after a crime or conflict has occurred. The purpose of restorative justice is to create a safe environment for sharing feelings (such as fear, anger, sadness) that have arisen as a result of conflict or crime and to talk about possible solutions for repairing the damage.

Social Justice, Community Engagement, and Undergraduate STEM Education: Participatory Science as a Teaching Tool.

Social justice is increasingly being seen as relevant to the science curriculum. We examine the intersection of participatory science, social justice, and higher education in the United States to investigate how instructors can teach about social justice and enhance collaborations to work toward enacting social justice. Participatory science approaches, like those that collect data over large geographic areas, can be particularly useful for teaching students about social justice. Conversely, local-scale approaches that integrate students into community efforts can create powerful collaborations to help facilitate social justice. We suggest a variety of large-scale databases, platforms, and portals that could be used as starting points to address a set of learning objectives about social justice. We also describe local-scale participatory science approaches with a social justice focus, developed through academic and community partnerships. Considerations for implementing participatory science with undergraduates are discussed, including cautions about the necessary time investment, cultural competence, and institutional support. These approaches are not always appropriate but can provide compelling learning experiences in the correct circumstances.

The Just Prison? Women’s Prison Reform and the Figure of the “Offender-as-Victim” in Germany

During the 1990s, the Berlin women’s prison was reformed to do justice to female inmates. This redesigning of space and programs was intended to meet women-specific conditions and needs. The present paper engages with this prison reform as transformation in the name of gender justice. Based on interviews with prison reformers, criminologists, and policymakers, as well as on the analysis of historical documents, we illuminate how a specific figure of the “criminalized woman” helps to translate the abstract notion of social justice into situated practice. From the 1970s onward, a new knowledge of women’s crime would emerge: it constituted female offenders as victims of patriarchal oppression and victimization, allowing the prison system to be criticized as androcentric and discriminatory against women. We argue that subsequent reform pursued gender justice in the form of difference-based, gender-responsive programs and spaces targeting individual inmates’ character and mindset. Thereby, the reformers’ initial critique of social justice would be unintentionally depoliticized and so gender, economic, and political inequalities remained unaddressed. Our purpose is hence twofold: first, to review the recent history of women’s incarceration in Germany, and second, to add a social justice focus to the international criminological debate on gender, prison, and reform.

Fashion and Race Database

The Fashion and Race Database (FRD) is a subscription-based website focused on centering and amplifying historical and contemporary marginalized voices within the fashion industry. Created in 2017, the database is a curated collection of unique and exclusive content in various formats highlighting the underexamined innovations, challenges, and experiences of racialized groups within fashion. The website offers a modern design, intuitive facets, and newly implemented accessibility features. Though the content is not offered with posttermination access, the overall subscription cost is reasonable, and licensing is offered under the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Shared Electronic Resource Understanding (SERU) license. Given its diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice (DEISJ) focus, user-friendly interface, unique content, relatively manageable cost, and streamlined licensing, FRD is a strong candidate to enrich any library’s collection in the fashion discipline.

Excluded but Fighting: Where Are the Voices of Sex Workers and Their Allies in EU Anti-Trafficking Policymaking?

The ‘end demand’ approach to prostitution has been popping up in Europe through the anti-trafficking debate and receives increasing attention on the international agenda. It is well recognized that improving workers’ rights, increasing unionization and collective bargaining coverage are effective strategies for tackling trafficking. However, with regard to sexual exploitation, focus is not on these strategies but instead on the abolition of the entire sex industry with the help of criminal justice systems. In first decade after the Palermo Protocol (2000), international organizations (IGOs) promoted a human rights-based approach to tackling trafficking, aiming to balance the criminal justice focus of the protocol. This work guided states on how to maintain and protect human rights while combating human trafficking. However, the explosive issue of sex work/prostitution was minimized, with IGOs avoiding the topic due to the fragile consensus about the definition of human trafficking and state obligations. Meanwhile, sex workers’ collectives and unions globally and throughout Europe developed their own strategies on how to address widespread criminalization, discrimination, violence and exploitation, with no or very limited funding and resources—and without recognition of their work, experience and expertise. This article presents how the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA) and other sex workers’ rights civil society organizations have sought to challenge the harmful impacts of the ‘end demand’ discourse and the criminalization of sex work in the name of anti-trafficking in Europe.

Understanding the Unforeseen Consequences of an Incomplete Transitional Justice Ecology in the Philippines

The Philippines is not typically the focus of transitional justice (TJ) scholarship. Yet, it has had to deal with violent legacies pertaining to each generation of TJ and has installed several TJ initiatives in response to this. This has given rise to a densely populated TJ landscape, spanning different periods and regions and including both formal and informal initiatives within various TJ pillars. In spite of this plethora of initiatives, the Philippines can hardly be called a ‘successful’ case of dealing with violent legacies – with the recent election of Bongbong Marcos as the most striking example thereof. In this article I argue that this can be understood in light of the absence of a genuine TJ ecology: there has not been an encompassing approach in which various kinds of initiatives interact with each other based on intersecting normative objectives. I argue that the case of the Philippines holds broader lessons regarding the importance of a more ecological understanding of TJ.

Staking the tent at the margins: Using disability justice to expand the theory and praxis of social equity in public administration

As the need to expand and deepen the focus of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion (SJDEI) continues to grow, it is incumbent upon the practitioners, scholars, and students of public administration to build and sustain a social equity theory and praxis that is broad and inclusive of all the communities, complexities, and nuances of SJDEI work. We write this editorial with an intention to expand social equity theory and praxis to create space for intersectionality. In particular, our editorial focuses on the inclusion of people with disabilities and the need for centering a disability justice perspective in public administration. This imperative stems from many needs, notably that people with disabilities are the largest minority group, globally and in the United States, yet are often overlooked in the scholarship and practices of public administration.

Teaching for social justice in higher education: Reflexive and critical auto-ethnographic narratives of hope, resilience, and change

Government policies increasingly call for educators to teach for social justice. This paper presents auto-ethnographic narratives about how two higher education teacher educators aspire to teach with a focus on social justice education. This paper supports the role of reflexive and critical reflections of onto-epistemological beliefs in teacher educators’ work to give meaning to the wider social contexts, including the neo-liberal hegemonic higher education agendas, influencing their work. The narratives shared in this paper demonstrate how teaching with a social justice focus in higher education is a delicate balancing act, navigating personal beliefs and understandings about justice and inclusive knowledge.

Broadening the Lens of Procedural Justice Beyond the Courtroom: A Case Study of Legal Financial Obligations in the Juvenile Court

Procedural justice research has shown how people’s experiences with courtroom actors, such as judges, defense attorneys, and prosecutors, shape their views of the justice system and its legitimacy. However, less is known about how people’s experiences outside the courtroom that relate to their cases shape their views of this system. Based on forty-one interviews with twenty-one youths and twenty parents in Dane County, Wisconsin about their legal financial obligations (also known as monetary sanctions), this study broadens the focus of procedural justice to include another key aspect to people’s experiences with the law beyond the courtroom: their experiences navigating bureaucratic aspects to their youths’ cases and their interactions with non-court staff (e.g., clerks, Human Services, and community agencies), otherwise known as “auxiliary personnel” (Feeley 1979) or “street-level bureaucrats” (Lipsky 2010/1980). We focus on legal financial obligations as a case study to show this multi-agency view of procedural justice as it reveals the families’ often disjointed experiences with justice staff both inside and outside of the courtroom.

Special Issue Editorial

This article introduces this special issue of the International Journal of Disability and Social Justice focusing on Independent Living, understood both as a social movement and an analytic paradigm. The aim of the special issue is to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Centre for Independent Living, as well as the tenth occurrence of the Freedom Drive, a biennial advocacy event organised by the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL). We first explain the significance of these two initiatives, tracing their history and rationale in terms of disabled people’s struggle for self-determination. We then discuss the meaning of Independent Living and associated definitional struggles. In the main part of the article, we explore the relations between Independent Living and the state, the market, and the family. This helps us to understand Independent Living as critique of professional power, self-sufficiency, and parental authority. The practical implications of these critiques are explored by looking at current struggles for deinstitutionalisation and personal assistance. We conclude by presenting the pillars of Independent Living and their consideration in the contributions to this special issue.

Implementation of Islamic Business Ethics In Small And Medium Micro Enterprises (Msmes) In Jambi City

<p class="Body"><strong><em>This study discusses implementing Islamic business ethics in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Jambi City. This research is a qualitative descriptive study, with data collection methods, namely interviews, observation, and documentation, and data analysis techniques, namely data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing. The informants in this study were MSME actors, namely MSME owners, employees, buyers, and the local community. The results of this study indicate that the MSME actors at Telanai Pura Jambi City have understood Islamic business ethics, believing that all transactions carried out are by Islamic teachings. MSME actors have also implemented Islamic business ethics principles, namely the principle of unity (tawhid), the focus of justice ('Adl), the principle of free will (Ikhtiar), the principle of responsibility (responsibility), and the principle of honesty (Siddiq). The application of these principles has been implemented into managed MSMEs, namely in the form of friendly and courteous service to customers, not neglecting prayer times, being generous, behaving honestly and fairly in the business being undertaken, selling good and decent goods, setting reasonable prices, always instilling an attitude of responsibility in doing business and always trying and believing that only Allah SWT is the one who controls the sustenance of his servants.</em></strong><strong><em></em></strong></p><p class="Body"><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Keywords : </strong><strong>Islamic Bussines Ettic, MSME Actors</strong></p>

Islamic Law Thought: The Concept of Wages for Workers According to Syafi’iyah Fiqh and Positive Law

Abstract
 This article aims to analyze the system of determining workers’ wages according to Syafi’iyah fiqh and positive law; the government is looking for an alternative approach to national labour issues, especially in the mechanism of applying wages that are by the efforts of workers as contained in the book of the Syafi’iyah school of thought. This research aims to determine the system for setting workers’ wages in Indonesia and to contribute ideas to Islamic economic law. At the same time, it can be applied in the life of Islamic society in the era of globalization and free markets. The method used in this paper is descriptive analysis with a normative juridical approach. The primary sources used in this writing are books by fiqh scholars from the Syafi’iyah school of thought and laws related to workers’ wages, namely Government Regulation (PP) Number 36 of 2021 concerning wages. The findings in this study are that workers’ salaries in Government Regulation (PP) Number 36 of 2021 obtained by workers are still different from the work performed by workers, and the risks they face are disproportionate. At the same time, the determination of wages, according to Syafi’iyah fiqh, must be based on the principles of justice that workers, employers, and the government feel. The focus of justice is translated as setting a minimum wage based on meeting the most basic needs of a worker. Thus, the most critical wage, according to Syafi’iyah fiqh, is real wages, not nominal wages (money).

How Are Leadership Programs Empowering Our Vulnerable Children and Youth? A Scoping Review

Globally vulnerable populations are negatively impacted by policy and practice. For vulnerable youth, risks to growth, development, and a lack of participation in decisions about their lives are common. Leadership programs are frequently implemented to address the risks faced by vulnerable youth. This review sought to describe the goals, content, and outcomes of existing youth development programs to better understand if they are meeting the needs of vulnerable youth. A scoping review was conducted using the PRISMA-ScR methodology. Ten electronic databases and grey literature were searched. A total of 89 youth development programs were identified. The goals, content, and outcomes of the programs were thematically analyzed. Four foci emerged, namely, youth, relationship, community, and social justice-focused development. A youth focus was most commonly represented, and the social justice focus was the least represented. Most programs addressed only one focus area. If youth development programs are to provide youth with both the skills to engage with and opportunities to change their circumstances, then all four focus areas need to be included. Secondly, a need for the active involvement of youth in both the planning and implementation of programs was identified. Finally, safeguarding needs to be highlighted in any program working with vulnerable youth.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING: USING EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY MARKETING CLIENT BRIEFS TO FOSTER AWARENESS, APPLICATION AND ACTION

ABSTRACT This paper reports a study coauthored with second-year undergraduate students that examines student experiences of undertaking real-life, client-set marketing assessments with an equality and inclusion remit. Students were set a marketing assessment with an explicit social justice focus, thereby prompting them to reflect on their own backgrounds and unconscious biases whilst addressing issues of societal injustice. This study explores the impact on students of closely engaging with this material and how the assessment, which involved them interviewing experts and developing actionable recommendations, altered their views and career plans. Data were generated via focus groups with students who undertook the assessment, supplemented by some alumni and client interviews. The findings are presented as a “3A” framework of Awareness, Application, and Action: first, the assessment raised “Awareness” of broader societal issues and fostered transformation in terms of personal views; second, students developed core skills and networks they could “Apply” in their future careers; and third, “Action” describes the way students felt empowered to make a positive difference to their client and wider society. The 3A model provides simple design principles that educators could implement if they want to introduce transformational experiences based on social justice issues into the marketing curriculum.

Thinking Holistically About Procedural Justice in Alternative Dispute Resolution: A Case Study of the German Federal Ombudsman Scheme

This article examines data collected from users of the German Federal Ombudsman Scheme (GFOS). The data was collected as part of a research project to understand how the GFOS operates in practice and how its procedures and outcomes are accepted by its users. We begin from the premise that experience of procedural justice during this alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process will build institutional legitimacy, and the article makes three contributions to the literature on procedural justice. First, we extend evidence of the link between procedural justice and legitimacy to a novel institutional context that is different in many ways to the criminal justice focus of much of the extant literature. Second, we consider the motivations of service users to engage with ADR as potential moderators of that link. Third, we analyze the relationship between procedural justice, subjective outcomes, and the actual outcomes provided to service users. Overall, we conclude that the link between procedural justice and legitimacy can be identified among those with very different motivations for using the GFOS.

Dismantling Structural Racism, Hate, and White Supremacy Through Course Assignments That Integrate Faith and Learning in Social Work Curriculum

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the nexus of faith and the triumvirate of learning, practice, and research. Social work educators have not consistently challenged social work students to consider the importance of the constructs of faith, religiosity, and spirituality in their own learning and lives. The acknowledgment of racism as an unjust social construct is the essential social justice focus of this paper. The authors present an example of a course assignment that may be used to help students explore the significance and meaning of faith, equity, and spirituality in others and in their own lives. The Critical Race Theory (CRT) is used as a theoretical framework to discuss how educators can prepare students to have a generalist perspective that is humane and social justice driven. The ethical duty to acknowledge, explore, and teach students faith in the social work curriculum is a key aspect of the biopsychosocial-spiritual assessment.

Teaching Health Justice: Centering Reproduction

This essay provides an overview of my experiences teaching Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) courses with an explicit health justice focus. I ground a discussion of pedagogical possibility by reflecting on my emerging course design, which centers reproductive justice—one example of a justice-oriented framework—as a site of learning and inquiry. In describing my course development and delivery, I suggest that a health justice approach to RHM instruction can be timely, contextually relevant, and challenging. Throughout the essay, I offer specific examples for the purposes of replication or adaptation for differently justice-oriented RHM teaching applications.

Promoting justice through community-based research: International case studies.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches to promoting justice focus on working from the ground up and giving a voice to marginalized communities regarding their concerns, potential solutions, and how to address social justice issues that matter to them. The pursuit of justice is often related to efforts to attain personal as well as collective well-being. In this paper, we illustrate three exemplars of community psychologists' efforts to promote justice. Within each case study, we discuss the social and community context and examine how the researchers built partnerships and solidarity, developed ways of doing, and approached challenges and solutions. First, we present an example to promote economic justice through an entrepreneurship initiative developed in collaboration with young Black youth with disabilities in the United States. The second case illustrates an effort to promote reproductive justice in collaboration with Roma women and girls in Spain. The third exemplar depicts the use of life stories as a method to raise the voices of displaced, marginalized indigenous women in Peru. Based on these three case studies, we present a synthesis model of social justice. We also discuss implications for future studies emphasizing the importance of engaging community participants in research meaningful ways, developing sustainable partnerships, and decolonizing research.

The Need for a Black Feminist Climate Justice

The Need for a Black Feminist Climate Justice