Domestic, family, and sexual violence (DFSV) is a widespread public health and human rights issue that disproportionately affects structurally marginalised communities. Mainstream justice responses-focused on policing, criminalisation, and incarceration-frequently do not meet the needs of victim-survivors. Transformative justice (TJ) offers community-led, non-carceral responses that promote harm reduction by seeking to reduce the harms of criminalisation, prevent further violence, promote healing and accountability, and transform the structural conditions that lead to violence. This scoping review maps the characteristics and applications of TJ in the context of DFSV. Led by victim-survivors of DFSV, this review followed Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology and the PRISMA-ScR checklist. Peer-reviewed and grey literature published between 2005 and 2025 was sourced from eight databases and Google. Sources were included if they described the characteristics of TJ in non-carceral contexts. Sixty-one sources met the inclusion criteria. Data were extracted using a customised tool and synthesised thematically. Most included sources originated in the United States and were situated outside academic publishing, reflecting TJ's community-based origins. TJ was consistently defined as an abolitionist approach rooted in community accountability, survivor autonomy, and structural transformation. Core principles included anticarceral and feminist commitments, trauma-informed care, and relational accountability. Goals focused on building safety within communities, creating justice processes not reliant on punitive measures, and transforming systemic conditions. Practices included pod mapping, transformative education, and knowledge-building activities such as storytelling and creative expression. The literature highlighted tensions around scalability, consistency, and engagement with state systems. TJ is an evolving field that remains resistant to formal institutionalisation and centres the leadership of those most affected by violence and criminalisation. Its relevance to harm reduction lies in its focus on preventing violence and criminalisation while building community prevention capacities. Research, policy, and practice should prioritise investment in grassroots infrastructures and the leadership of victim-survivors and marginalised communities. The reviewed literature argues that applications of TJ resist being reduced to static models or assimilated into carceral frameworks. Rather, their potential is founded on collective support and sustained political organising, and the long-term work of community transformation. This review followed a pre-specified protocol developed by the research team in accordance with JBI methodology (Peters M et al. in E. Aromataris (eds) Joanna Briggs Institute: South Australia, 2015) and PRISMA-ScR guidelines (Tricco AC et al. in Ann Intern Med 169:467-673, 2018). The protocol is registered on the Open Science Framework (2025) doi: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/FTSR4.

Transformative Justice in the Shadow of Neoliberalism: A Critical Look at California’s Division of Juvenile Justice

ABSTRACT This article introduces the concept of AI harmscapes to examine how artificial intelligence systems reproduce and amplify structural violence, exclusion, and inequality in the Global South, while revealing spaces for transformative justice responses. Drawing on critical criminology and science and technology studies, we develop a framework for understanding AI as a governance tool that enhances assemblages of control while generating new forms of social harm. Through case studies of predictive policing in Cape Town, digital identity systems in Kenya, and facial recognition in India, we analyse how AI-enhanced technologies entrench existing inequalities while being contested by affected communities and civil society organizations. We challenge criminology’s reliance on post-hoc accountability mechanisms and argue for anticipatory, community-centred governance approaches grounded in nodal and polycentric governance principles. By centring Global South experiences and resistance strategies, this analysis contributes to digital criminology while advancing transformative approaches to justice in an increasingly algorithmic world.

This article introduces the special issue entitled Gendered Violence, the State and the Individual. A Legal and Historical Approach by using a judgment issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2021 as example of the ambiguous societal and statal responses to gendered violence. Key feminist theories are outlined in order to expose the several facets and forms of violence and the State's critical role in combating, eradicating, and preventing, but also in perpetrating and perpetuating violence. Altogether, the special issue exposes the ambivalence of the State as protector and oppressor in both the public and private dimensions and aims to advocate for the need of a deeply socio-cultural, global and holistic approach that implements an inclusive and transformative justice.

Against the backdrop of ecological crises, competency-driven and anthropocentric approaches in sustainability education are insufficient for transformative change. This article reconceptualizes the sustainability mindset (SM) through Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), advancing a post-anthropocentric orientation that foregrounds relationality, more-than-human agency, and epistemic humility. To operationalize this reframing, this article proposes a theoretical framework interweaving three pedagogical approaches. Critical Pedagogy provides the ethical and political foundation, positioning sustainability as a transformative justice project by interrogating power, oppression, and inequality across social, ecological, and interspecies domains. Dark Pedagogy contributes an affective-ontological lens, embracing discomfort, grief, and existential reflection as necessary for unlearning anthropocentrism and cultivating humility in the face of planetary limits. Applied Drama-Based Pedagogy complements these by offering embodied, participatory methods that transform abstract critique and affective insight into lived, relational practice. Together, these pedagogies create conditions for cultivating an OOO-informed SM that is ethical, affective, and experiential. While conceptual, the framework provides a foundation for reimagining sustainability education as a site of transformation and calls for empirical research on its practical enactment in diverse learning contexts.

This article explores how our research team integrated abolition feminism (Davis et al, 2022), critical inquiry, embodiment and praxis-based knowledge into a four-year process investigating transformative justice (TJ) and restorative justice (RJ) remedies for gender-based violence. To generate insights, we used an iterative approach that involved reflective memo writing, team dialogue and engagement with relevant literature on gender-based violence and vicarious trauma. Drawing from healing justice and praxis (Freire, 1968; Pyles, 2020; Page and Woodland, 2023), we wove together reflection and action to foster belonging, meaningful productivity and collective growth. This process not only deepened our understanding of TJ and RJ, but also supported us in reducing vicarious trauma and mitigating its harms. We share these insights to aid other researchers in developing trauma-informed, justice-oriented approaches to address gender-based violence and its impacts.

Abstract Considering that the politics of who counts as a victim of an armed conflict is a starting point for both national reparation programs and truth-seeking mechanisms, this article investigates how the campesino came to be rendered by the Colombian transitional justice system as the main victim of the armed conflict. To investigate the grid of intelligibility informing the work of that system, we first trace the historical encounters between the technocratic fields of conflict resolution, development as a means to durable peace, and transitional justice, an intersection that shaped understandings of war and peace in Colombia. In the second part, we show how this genealogy is key for us to grasp the grammar through which rural spaces and populations have come to be understood as “most affected” by war. Then, we move to a discussion about the work of the Colombian Truth Commission in the context of the 2016 peace agreement implementation, aiming to capture how legibility was produced through the classification and quantification of the rural among the universe of victims of the armed conflict. We thus explore how the political practice of counting things produced campesino victims as a political subject and rearticulated broader understandings of how victimhood can, and must, be counted. In doing so, we contribute to discussions on transitional and transformative justice by analyzing knowledge practices involved in redrawing the boundaries of victimhood in peacebuilding efforts, as well as on the politics of categorization and quantification in the making of peace, development, and justice.

Access to justice is a cornerstone of the rule of law and democratic governance. However, structural inequalities such as poverty, caste hierarchies, gender discrimination, and lack of legal awareness continue to prevent marginalized communities from effectively accessing the justice system. Legal aid therefore functions as a critical mechanism that bridges the gap between formal legal rights and their practical enforcement. This article examines the evolving concept of legal aid from a welfare-oriented service to a rights-based framework grounded in constitutional and human rights principles. It analyses the legal and institutional framework governing legal aid in India, particularly the role of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 and Article 39-A of the Constitution, alongside judicial interpretations recognizing legal aid as an essential component of the right to life and fair trial. The study also engages with international human rights instruments that emphasize access to legal representation as an integral element of justice. By adopting the lens of transformative justice, the article argues that legal aid must move beyond procedural assistance and function as a tool for social empowerment. It concludes by proposing reforms such as rights-based legislation, institutional strengthening, technological integration, and community-based legal empowerment strategies to ensure meaningful and inclusive access to justice for vulnerable populations.

INTRODUCTION: As artificial intelligence, algorithms, and data-driven technologies become more embedded in social services, education, health care, and justice systems, concerns continue to grow about how these tools may reproduce existing social inequities. METHODS: From a critical social work perspective, this article examines the ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) development and implementation can reinforce racism, ableism, classism, and other forms of structural oppression particularly through predictive and surveillance-based decision-making practices. The article explores how data-collection practices and algorithmic design are shaped by historical and institutional bias, despite frequent claims that these technologies are neutral or objective. Drawing on examples from criminal justice, child welfare, and health settings that utilised custom-built enterprise models, the analysis highlights the risks of opacity, universalisation, and feedback loops that can deepen harm for marginalised individuals and communities. FINDINGS: In response, the article advances an intersectional power analysis and proposes a critical participatory practice approach to technology development. By centring the knowledge, experiences, and leadership of those most impacted by AI-driven systems, this approach positions technology as a potential tool for transformational justice rather than social control. CONCLUSION: The article concludes by arguing that ethical engagement with AI in social work requires ongoing reflexivity, political accountability, and meaningful community participation.

Accountability as Self-Determination: Abolitionist conceptions of health, wellbeing, and safety.

Community is central to the praxis of transformative justice as communities provide social, mental, and financial support. This article utilizes transformative justice as an analytic to examine my experiences in community with Black queer folks at Shuga Shaq: An All People of Color Burlesque Revue. I utilize Black feminist autoethnography to interpret and historicize my experiences in community among Black queer folks in a predominantly white U.S. city. I examine the structure of a typical Shuga Shaq show, concentrating on the hosts, cohosts, performances by burlesque dancers, and kinship formation with audience members. The political and cultural messages embedded in performances on and off stage constitute joy, self-love, and a celebration of Brown and Black bodies of all shapes and sizes.

The intersection of the viral #MeToo campaign with recent Black Lives Matter protests produced more mainstream discussions of abolitionist approaches to sexual violence, which include transformative justice. In this article, we explore the implications of these discussions for universities in England, which have had less attention from abolitionists than institutions in the US (see for example Coker, 2016; Boggs et al, 2019; Méndez, 2020), and in which there is increasing demand for bureaucratic and punitive regulation (Phipps, 2024). First, we review transformative- and restorative-justice projects already implemented in universities and discuss their levels of success. Second, our article asks: what conditions of possibility are necessary for exploring, let alone implementing, transformative justice in English universities? We approach this question from two angles – assessing processes and relationships, and the adversarial procedural frameworks currently employed to tackle sexual violence – and ask how the connections and trust necessary for meaningful accountability (Kaba, 2021) could be built in the university space. We also ask how such work might avoid being co-opted and made non-performative (Ahmed, 2012) in the interests of preserving the status quo. Our analysis is situated in the colonial history of universities and their contemporary financial and political entanglements, and the neoliberalisation of higher education, especially in England and Wales.

This article discusses the existence of victims who should be the main subject of protection, but are often positioned as parties who are also at fault through stigma, moral stereotypes, and biased law enforcement practices where the law is not neutral, but is shaped by the tug-of-war between political and ideological interests that often reproduce social hierarchies and masculine biases in doctrine, standards of proof, and judicial practices. This normative legal research examines the national and international legal frameworks related to victim protection, including the TPKS Law, human rights instruments, and victimology doctrine, to show that victim protection is still abstract and not yet fully oriented towards the recovery and respect for the dignity of victims. Using a CLS approach and feminist critique, this article reveals that claims of legal neutrality often conceal masculine bias, including in standards of proof, testing the credibility of victims, and normalizing accusatory questioning in the courtroom. The results of the study show that the elimination of victim blaming is a prerequisite for procedural, substantive, and transformative justice, and requires an explicit legal reconstruction based on the perspective of victims and gender equality, including through the progressive implementation of PERMA No. 3 of 2017 and Law No. 12 of 2022 concerning TPKS. This article recommends a gender-responsive and trauma-informed approach, synchronization of technical guidelines between institutions, and strengthening of a legal paradigm that places victims at the center of justice, not merely as objects of the penal process

Penn, Social Systems, and the Community (PSSTC) is a semester-long, non-credit, asynchronous course designed to prepare the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) Master of Public Health (MPH) students for community engagement by analyzing how historical and systemic inequities impact public health. As a prerequisite for the Applied Practice Experience (APE), PSSTC addresses a key pedagogical challenge in public health education: providing foundational training on structural inequalities and their influence on public health practice. The curriculum includes nine online modules and four synchronous discussions covering topics such as racism and other forms of oppression, social determinants of health, implicit bias and microaggressions, transformative justice, and the role of UPenn itself in these broader systems. A post-course survey was administered and respondents agreed that the course prepared them for the applied practice experience and other public health work. Students also reported gaining knowledge and practical strategies for working with diverse populations. Suggested improvements included condensing content for more focused learning and incorporating broader perspectives from underrepresented racial, ethnic, and religious populations. In response, course revisions are ongoing to streamline content and ensure alignment with the evolving public health landscape.

Even when designed by and for members of (multiple) oppressed groups, nightlife is generally an unsafe experience. In response to this, awareness teams have emerged internationally in recent years, ensuring that members of these groups can continue to participate in nightlife. Based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with activists in Graz, Austria, contextualised with autoethnography as well as a discourse analysis of policies and recommendations from activists in the broader Austrian and European contexts, I explore in this paper how awareness labour can contribute to transformative justice. I argue that by preventing the most vulnerable members of oppressed groups from being excluded from nightlife and educating everyone who engages with them within nightlife about oppression and privilege, awareness labour sits at the intersection of care and activism. As such, it bears potential to effect social change by teaching a broad segment of society about different practices of coming together that are not based on exploitation, extraction, or oppression. Awareness labour broadens our understanding of activism by intervening in the unjust distribution of care. The paper concludes by proposing areas for further research to determine how to realise the transformative potential of awareness labour.

Landscape approaches mobilize stakeholders across sectors and scales to negotiate development–conservation trade-offs and land-use allocation. Building on the concept of earth system justice, we examine how efforts to operationalize such approaches in Ghana, Zambia and Indonesia advance landscape justice. We observed contributions to procedural, recognitional and intergenerational justice, while interspecies justice remains overlooked. Yet, power asymmetries, exclusionary practices and institutional constraints hinder progress towards intragenerational and substantive—distributive, corrective, restorative and transformative justice. In contexts lacking commitment to transformative change, trade-offs are inevitable. Pursuing incremental change rather than ‘perfect’ justice may represent a second-best but more realistic pathway towards just landscape governance.

Abstract This article examines emerging environmental activism in Kosovo, focusing on the right to water as a key theme in grassroots responses to resource crises. Using political ecology and photo-elicitation interviews with activists and experts, the study reveals how lived experiences and local knowledge shape resistance to environmental degradation, injustice, and resource privatization. Activism is portrayed as a dynamic, intersectional movement tied to contested ecologies and rooted in marginality, memory, and ongoing struggles over natural resources. Rather than treating environmentalism as a singular issue, the article frames it as a constellation of interconnected struggles. The visual, process-oriented methodology emphasizes both resistance and solidarity, showing how environmental crises can inspire wider political mobilization. Additionally, the research contributes to understanding regional dynamics and insecurities, illustrating how environmental activism is deeply embedded in Kosovo’s complex socio-political context and broader visions for transformative justice.

Although studies on organizations and social structures have been widely discussed in management and organizational sociology literature, research that specifically integrates an Islamic perspective, particularly the values of amanah, justice, and efficiency, within organizational contexts in the digital era remains relatively limited. This study aims to analyze organizations as social structures from an Islamic perspective and to explore the integration of the values of amanah, justice, and efficiency in organizational management amid digital transformation. The study adopts a qualitative approach with a library research design, involving analysis of primary sources comprising the Qur'an, the Sunnah, as well as classical and contemporary works in Islamic thought, management, and organizational sociology. Data were collected through documentation techniques and analyzed using thematic analysis to identify concepts, values, and patterns of integration between Islamic teachings and modern organizational practices. The findings show that amanah functions as the ethical foundation of leadership and organizational governance, justice becomes the main principle in role distribution and decision-making, and efficiency is understood as a form of professionalism and resource optimization aligned with the principle of ihsan. These findings contribute to the development of a conceptual framework for organizations grounded in Islamic values and broaden the understanding of the relevance of Islamic teachings for organizational management in the digital era. The study concludes by emphasizing the importance of integrating the values of amanah, justice, and efficiency in building sustainable, welfare-oriented organizations, and recommends that organizational leaders, educational institutions, and policymakers adopt these values as ethical and strategic foundations in modern organizational governance. The implications of this research include theoretical contributions to enriching the Islamic management literature and practical implications for developing organizations that are adaptive, ethical, and competitive in the digital era, while also opening avenues for further research on the empirical implementation of Islamic values in contemporary organizations.

ABSTRACT Accountability is a central concept and practice within the paradigms of restorative and transformative justice. While scholarship examining accountability is growing, there is limited research focused on the perspectives of people who have committed violence and sought to be accountable for the harm they caused. This is particularly relevant given that the agency of people who have caused harm is a core theoretical and practical underpinning of accountability in restorative and transformative justice. This study used a critical and interpretative phenomenological approach, interviewing 11 men who committed homicide, served long sentences in prison, participated in a restorative process while incarcerated, and have since come home. Participants were asked about their pathways to accountability starting from when they committed the violence, to their participation in a restorative program, and through to their return home from incarceration. They were asked what supported and hindered their accountability-taking including questions about the roles of prison, race, and gender. For most participants, accountability was a process that took time, in which their own agency played a central role. The findings reveal that there was no single pathway to accountability, rather, the process of accountability-taking was constituted by a constellation of factors and eventually an accumulation of supportive relationships, experiences, and programs. Supportive factors included time, experiences of safety and acceptance, peer relationships, and an intentional space to deepen accountability for their offense. Barriers included experiences of judgment, shame, and hiding, a lack of trusting relationships, gender norms, and the punitive nature of the prison environment.

WHEN WE DON'T GET COMMUNITY RIGHT IN RESTORATIVE JUSTICE SPACES: CANCEL CULTURE AND FAILURE TO TRANSFORM