Justice Project Research Articles

Recovering Anticolonialism as an Intellectual and Political Project in Education

AbstractIn this essay, Michalinos Zembylas revisits the tension between decolonization and other social justice projects in education scholarship, focusing in particular on the arguments for and against the notion of decolonization as land return. While different colonized communities are justifiably projecting their own political priorities in struggles against specific colonial forms of domination, Zembylas argues that education as scholarship and practice would be well served to recover the anticolonial as a shared intellectual and political project for understanding the different practices and experiences of resistance to colonialism and imperialism around the world. Anticolonial thought and praxis offer education scholars, activists, and practitioners an intellectual and political framework of connectivity and anticolonial solidarity that neither erases differences between decolonization and other political projects, nor fails to foreground community building between fields, approaches, and geographical regions. Instead of seeing different political projects as competing against one another — e.g., by considering social justice projects that do not prioritize land return as misguided or misplaced — anticolonialism seeks to theorize and act against a broad range of colonial practices and by‐products that include racism, militarism, resources exploitation, land dispossession, and so on.

Contribution of Responsive Governance to Personal Security of Crime Victims in Kenya

This study explored the critical role of responsive governance in enhancing the efficacy of victim assistance programs, with a particular focus on Kenya’s criminal justice system. By examining Kenya's low ranking on the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index and comparing it with other nations such as the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Nigeria, the study highlights significant gaps in the protection of crime victims' rights. Employing a mixed-methods approach, this study investigated how governance impacts victim support by analyzing data from surveys and interviews with victims, government officials, law enforcement, and advocacy groups in Nairobi. The research identified the key principles for successful victim support, including inclusivity, transparency, accountability, and flexibility. It underscores the need for victim-centered approaches that prioritize accessibility, empathy, respect, confidentiality, and empowerment. The findings reveal both successes and challenges in current programs, with issues such as inadequate funding and limited collaboration affecting service delivery. The study advocates for the establishment of a Victim Support Agency (VSA) in Kenya to centralize victim support, enhance transparency, and foster effective stakeholder collaboration. The study recommends a holistic, coordinated, and well-funded approach that includes continuous improvement of victim support programs to address the existing gaps and advance justice and support for crime victims.

International Crimes and Double Standards

Abstract The law’s aspiration to impartiality, central to its legitimacy, is impaired by concerns that judicial systems treat similarly situated persons or factual situations differently for improper reasons. In few fields is this truer than the sphere of international criminal justice, where the political stakes are high and judicial institutions are relatively young. The conflicts in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine have fuelled claims on all sides that the search for accountability has been marred by double standards. How these are addressed — by courts, states, and civil society — matters for the victims of grave crimes, and for the international justice project itself. This article argues that, while those who wish to advance international justice cannot eliminate double standards, they can adopt concrete measures to combat and minimize them. Given how important perceptions are in this debate, even small steps matter.

The Rule of Law and Corporate Actors: Measuring Influence

AbstractThis article proposes an approach for conceptualizing and assessing the extent to which corporate actors impact the rule of law environment in different societies. To achieve this, the methodology for the Corporate Actors and the Rule of Law Index is developed based on a reimagined methodology derived from the Rule of Law Index by the World Justice Project, originally conceived in a state-centric manner. The methodology proposed in this article includes the following factors: preventing corporate capture and corporate contribution to structural inequality, corporate integrity and transparency, meaningful stakeholder engagement; order and security; impact on the regulatory sphere; corporate accountability for human rights abuses; access to grievance mechanisms. Measuring the influence of corporate actors on the rule of law and indicating the dynamic of this influence significantly contributes to the overall understanding of the rule of law environment. The absence of such measurement distorts the comprehension of the balance of power in a society, impedes the development of legal regulation, obstructs the identification of problematic issues in ensuring the rule of law, and hinders efforts to address them.

Urban governance arrangements for sustainability and justice – linking theory with experience

The Leipzig Charter highlights the need for integrated, place-based participatory governance approaches to achieve more sustainable and just urban futures. In this article, we provide a synthesis of our transdisciplinary analysis of ten EU projects which were selected from over 100 EU-funded urban sustainability and justice projects. Through analysing these cases according to the question of ‘How can city makers design governance processes for just and sustainable outcomes?’, we identify six Enabling Governance Arrangements which are considered of high relevance to the integration of urban sustainability and justice through both municipality and community-led initiatives. Each Enabling Governance Arrangement was not only observed at play in multiple initiatives but was also further consolidated and confirmed in dedicated workshops with over 60 city makers of different backgrounds. This highlights their potential to stir place-specific debates around the governance of sustainable and just cities. Overall, we provide empirically grounded, actionable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers on how to achieve integrated urban sustainability and justice through Enabling Governance Arrangements.

Oral History and the Climate Crisis: Listening in the Aftermath of Disaster

ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of the multiple interrelated facets of the on-campus and university-community climate justice projects developed by individuals at the Oral History Lab/Laboratorio de Historia Oral at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). Beginning with a discussion of our oral history and documentary filmmaking program for students at UPRM and our workshop series for mutual aid organizations across the archipelago, this article explores the value of eyewitness testimony and experiential knowledge in resituating narrators who have been disempowered by disaster and/or marginalization, in contributing to global conversation about the climate crisis, and in developing ethical approaches to postdisaster research that employ decolonial and anti-racist methodologies and trauma-informed approaches. Ultimately, this article frames the qualitative, community-based data sets present in postdisaster oral histories as essential information for members of our frontline communities and the external stakeholders of policymakers, responders, and researchers who are making decisions that directly impact these communities.

INTEGRATING FORENSIC MENTAL HEALTH IN LEGAL PROCESSES

The special report titled "Integrating Forensic Mental Health in Legal Processes" focuses on an event held on December 15, 2023, at Sheikh Zayed Medical College in Rahim Yar Khan. This collaborative event, organized by Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), the Pakistan Psychiatric Society (Punjab Chapter), and the departments of Psychiatry and Forensic Medicine, highlighted the crucial intersection of mental health and criminal justice in Pakistan. The report discusses the situation of the death penalty and capital punishment in Pakistan, emphasizing the challenges faced by juvenile prisoners and those with mental health issues. It also features the screening of three documentaries depicting the struggles of individuals affected by the criminal justice system, emphasizing the need for a more compassionate and equitable legal system. The event included an interactive Q&A session with diverse stakeholders and concluded with an acknowledgment of JPP's contributions towards advocating justice reform. The report suggests enhancing the diversity of perspectives, focusing on actionable outcomes, and involving policymakers more directly in future events to strengthen their impact.

Violence, Democracy and Criminal Justice in five South American countries (2014-2020)

Latin America is the most violent region in the world. Its average rate exceeds 20 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, while the global average rate is 6 per 100,000 and the epidemic limit is 10 per 100,000. No consolidated democracy has uncontrolled rates of homicidal violence, none of them have high impunity and a low rate of rule of law. Our task in this paper will be to relate violence, the level of democracy and criminal justice as a proxy indicator of the rule of law in five representative countries in Latin America. To this end, we use the following as indicators for measuring, classifying and correlating these concepts: democracy indices from The Economist's Democracy Index; UNODC homicide rates per hundred thousand inhabitants as a proxy for violence; and the factor eight criminal justice indices from the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index (2021). Our theoretical argument, or conjecture to be tested, was that the indicators of violence, democracy and criminal justice as a factor of the Rule of Law are associated. In other words, the signs of statistical correlations and crossing data sets from the 2014-2020 time series point to a higher level of democracy when there is a higher level of criminal justice and, in turn, lower levels of violence. Data analysis confirmed our theoretical conjecture and, in the five countries analyzed, violence tends to fall with the improvement of criminal justice indicators (Rule of Law) and reflects a better quality of democracy.

Reckoning with Colonial Legacies of Harm: Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission

ABSTRACT Australia’s colonial era is formally over. Yet the legacies of structural inequality, dispossession, exploitation and racism against Indigenous Australia remain alive and well. In 2021, Victoria established the Yoorrook Justice Commission, culminating in a formal truth-telling and treaty process. Seeking to address harm since colonization, the state process is unprecedented both nationally and abroad. This article considers the relevance of the commission to truth recovery, accountability and structural reform in Australia. To date, national efforts to deal with the colonial past have been piecemeal and relatively ineffective. The Yoorrook Justice Commission departs from previous single-issue inquiries as well as from reconciliation policies driven by white-Australian federal institutions. While the Commission is not a panacea for resolving colonial injustice, it provides an important means of relational and structural truth-telling towards more just relations and righting racial wrongs. Ultimately, the Yoorrook Justice Commission sets a valuable precedent for Australia and other postcolonial nations. Its level of Indigenous ownership, its authority as a Royal Commission and the breadth of its inquiry make it a significant transitional justice project.

Developing a justice-focused body image program for U.S. middle schoolers: a school-based community-engaged research process

ABSTRACT We describe a community-engaged research process to co-create and implement an evidence-informed, diversity-focused body image program for early adolescents. Our team included middle school staff, students, and teachers, and university faculty and students. Team members had a diverse range of intersecting cis- and transgender, racial, sexuality, and disability identities. Specific steps to the research process included: (1) establishing team leads at each site to maintain a collaborative and non-hierarchical team structure; (2) bi-weekly advisory team meetings to establish program needs and discuss curriculum and implementation options; (3) a year-long youth co-design process to generate content ideas, pilot pieces of programming, and incorporate youth leadership through an equity lens; (4) inclusive program writing from members of socially marginalized groups; (5) program piloting to solicit feedback from teachers, facilitators, and students; and (6) collaboratively incorporating feedback. The resulting 8-session (6 hours total) Body Justice Project has both dissonance-based and media literacy foundations, with topics related to cultural appearance ideals, diet culture and non-diet nutrition, media and appearance pressure, and body autonomy. It is designed for in-class delivery to middle school students by trained college and youth co-facilitator teams. We emphasize guiding principles and lessons learned, along with next steps in implementation.

Intro to HPC Bootcamp: Engaging New Communities Through Energy Justice Projects

Intro to HPC Bootcamp: Engaging New Communities Through Energy Justice Projects

Advancing Local US Transitional Justice Initiatives: A University Partnership Alongside Descendant Communities

ABSTRACT This article suggests that the ongoing denial by the USA federal government of historical human rights infractions against African Americans and people of African descent led to a proliferation of local transitional justice efforts. Drawing from a university-driven transitional justice project, this article offers an analysis of local initiatives and highlights one of its six transitional justice collaborations. The university project sought to decolonize its structure and approach, drawing on methods of cultural humility, desire-based research and deep listening. This article responds to the success and challenges of decolonizing a transitional justice project within academia. Findings suggested that local initiatives face obstacles due to enduring legacies of harms and silenced histories, necessitating communities to substantiate their claims. Capacity issues and funding are challenged due to centuries of disinvestment. The article offers lessons learned for potential ally organizations who seek to advance transitional justice where government-sponsored redress continues to be denied.

University Work Experiences in International Development: Expanding Locations, Spaces and Pathways

How can university work experiences contribute to reframing International Development from expert saviourism rooted in colonial legacies into a project of social justice and global solidarity? In this article, I propose the design of work-experiential pedagogies that integrate practical work experiences with critical theoretical teaching and an emphasis on students’ experiential knowledge. Such pedagogies call for an expansion of the forms of university work experiences, challenging students to reflect on their manifold personal and institutional locations, to explore the diverse spaces in which work experiences can take place and to experiment with multiple pathways for change. My proposal draws on teaching examples and student journeys at my home university in the UK.

Racial Justice and Racialized Religion: Are Progressive White Christians Getting It Right?

Abstract The core question guiding this research is: What happens when the project of racial justice, specifically, anti-black racism, is taken on by white progressive Christians and their churches? Acknowledging religion as racialized allows our scholarship to be more discerning and less naive, especially regarding the true potential of racial justice—even among those who are most faithfully attempting to become antiracist. Drawing from preliminary data collected from congregations in the United States and Canada aligned with the Alliance of Baptists, a denomination explicitly committed to antiracism, I focus on a few significant dynamics, briefly summarized under seven themes: (1) Getting It Right, (2) The Volunteer Antiracist, (3) Congregational Politics, (4) Encountering Resistance, (5) Soliciting Cooperation, (6) Instrumentalizing Whiteness as a Ready Tool, and (7) Affirmation from Black Members. As data collection continues, this research remains open to developing more insights and revising tentative conclusions as the analysis proceeds further.

Go-Go Music and Racial Justice in Washington, DC

In 2019, a noise complaint from a new, white resident of Shaw, a historically Black neighborhood of Washington, DC, led a local MetroPCS store to mute the go-go music that the storefront had played on its outdoor speakers for decades. The cultural and social implications of muting go-go music, a DC-originated genre of music that has played a central role in DC Black culture, inspired a viral hashtag, #dontmutedc, on social media, as well as a series of high-profile public protests against the muting. The #dontmutedc protests highlighted the increasing impact of gentrification on DC’s Black communities, and connected gentrification to several other important social issues affecting Black DC residents. In the wake of the #dontmutedc incident, several DC-area activist organizations have integrated go-go music into major, public-facing racial justice projects. The first part of this article presents a brief history of go-go music and race in DC community life, mainstream media, and law enforcement in order to contextualize the work of go-go-centered activist work in the aftermath of the #dontmutedc protests. The second part of this article highlights the go-go-centered activist work of three organizations: the Don’t Mute DC movement, Long Live Go-Go, and the Go-Go Museum and Café. These movements’ projects will be used to categorize three distinct approaches to go-go-centered racial justice activism in the Washington, DC, area.

Beyond the Realms of Formal Justice: Critically Analyzing Pakistan's Standing at WJP Rule of Law

Regretfully, Pakistan stands at 130th out of 139 countries in WJP’s report observance of the rule of law (World Justice Project, 2022). Despite the fact that World Justice Project is a Multidisciplinary collaboration which prepares its reports on the basis of certain principles including the answerable government, good laws and Access to justice etc (Agrast et al., 2012). This paper aims to comprehend the approach and modus operandi of WJP reports on adherence to Rule of Law. It further depicts the tactic used to establish the WJP Rule of Law Index. The main theme of the paper is to rectify the layman’s approach in understanding WJP report on adherence to rule of Law, carve up the onus on all the institutions fairly and discern whom to blame for the sole purpose of finding out where to improve.

Transnational Law and Criminal Justice System: Highlighting Legislative and Procedural Challenges to combat Cyber Crime in the wake of CPEC

World Justice Project’s (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2022 ranked Pakistan globally at 129th out of 140 countries while on regional level Pakistan is ranked 5th out of 6 countries. Where Pakistan’s justice system is hitting the bottom in rule-of-law index, at the same time, the entire nation is celebrating China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is a flagship project of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) also known as OBOR. This is a Chinese master stroke in the cross-continental geo-economics of the world. With a heavy influx of Chinese businesses and Chinese nationals arriving in the country, the markets and Pakistani citizens are vulnerable to criminal activities including more sophisticated types of crimes such as crimes involving ICT. In particular, incidents of ATM skimming are rising in Karachi among other crimes. Foreign nationals are arrested include Chinese nationals; however, legislative and procedural lacunasand prosecution related defects eventually cause the prosecution version to collapse during trial. Therefore, this research study proposes strong legislative and judicial framework, human resource development including need for prompt initiatives in the subordinate judiciary. This research also highlights the need for having proper compliance of environmental and labor laws regulations. The research is based on mixed methodology. Quantitative analysis is conducted on the data collected through questionnaires from the sample of 50 respondents that include advocates, FIA investigation officers and public prosecutors.In addition, qualitative analysis is done through interviews of senior officers from NR3C as well as I.Os, students, academics and research economists from academia.

A study of critical whiteness in sport research and disrupting racism: research with a Black Lives Matter task force

ABSTRACT This research note considers tensions and challenges faced by our research team in raising questions about white researchers, problematizing whiteness in research, and confronting anti-Black racism in sport. We document important insights to disrupt how white privilege is connected to complicity in racism. In doing so, we critically reflect on the process of our work with a Black Lives Matters (BLM) task force and our shift towards proactive allyship. Specifically, we frame our discussion through the concepts of critical whiteness, critical humility, and discomfort as white researchers involved in a social justice project confronting anti-Black racism in sport. Finally, with a call to action we identify the need for researchers to practice flexibility in research design and embrace social movements that alter the linear approaches to data collection and analysis. We also critique research team composition with our commitment to disrupting racism by problematizing whiteness.

The Role of Open Government in Maintaining Trust in Public Administration

The concept of trust has gained significance in the discourse surrounding traditional public administration, which has been questioned in various respects regarding its relationship with the public. The political, social, and economic changes that have occurred in recent times have led to numerous transformations in the unx”derstanding of public administration. It is crucial to maintain trust in relationships, and this is a topic that has been thoroughly discussed. Trust approaches are evaluated within public administration paradigms in this study. The objective of this research is to assess how government openness impacts citizens’ trust in the government. To measure the influence of open states on public trust, European social research data and data from the open government index, developed by the World Justice Project, were utilised. To investigate whether the countries’ level of open statehood alters trust in public administration, the study initially utilized the Kruskal-Wallis test, followed by the Mann-Whitney U test to identify the variance origin. The findings confirmed the positive impact of open statehood on trust.

Working Towards Anti-Racist Local Health Departments: The ARCC Towards Justice Project

Working Towards Anti-Racist Local Health Departments: The ARCC Towards Justice Project