Transformative justice, women with convictions and uniting communities

  • Havard, Tirion (PI)
  • Bartley, Sarah (CoI)
  • Mahoney, Ian (CoI)
  • Magill, Chris (PI)
  • Flood, Chris (CoI)

Project Details

Description

The project 'Transformative justice, women with convictions and uniting communities' aimed to establish the effectiveness of Transformative Justice in creating social cohesion between two distinct yet inter-related communities, namely Staffordshire women with convictions, and local residents of Stoke-on-Trent.

It sought to establish if Transformative Justice could effectively support increased cohesion within and between both communities making them stronger, more equal, and more connected.

Women with convictions, including those who have served custodial sentences, have complex needs. They account for 13 per cent of deaths of people on post-release supervision yet women represent under 5 per cent of the prison population. Community responses are identified as the most effective to prevent reoffending, but community provision is inconsistent.

An alternative to traditional criminal justice, Transformative Justice focuses on community accountability and engagement to break cycles of abuse, challenge unequal power relationships and build community understanding of people’s lives and needs. Offenders are offered a safe space for healing, accountability, and to build resilience.

The study included focus groups with women with convictions to explore their needs, experiences, and views on Transformative Justice. The team also worked with practitioners from local and national organisations with expertise in supporting women with convictions and partnered with arts-based organisations to host 15 workshops with Stoke-on-Trent residents.

The research used a mixed-methodological approach that involved designing and delivering an arts-based Transformative Justice intervention, undertaking ethnographic observations, running focus groups and conducting interviews with transformative justice experts.

The overarching aims of this project were to see:
> if Transformative Justice could effectively facilitate social cohesion and promote equality within local communities (for the purposes of this research, ‘equality’
was appraised by exploring strengths, assets, attributes, connectedness, enhanced individual welfare and social well-being);
>if Transformative Justice could effectively support women with convictions to reintegrate and resettle into their local communities. and resettle into their local communities.

As a conceptual framework, transformative justice focuses on overcoming ingrained social and structural barriers to engagement and justice issues including
the social, political and economic status of communities and the individuals within them.

In focusing on community accountability for crime, victimisation and subsequent support for victims and people convicted of offences, transformative justice recognises that patriarchal social structures can legitimise violence, particularly towards women, and that the state, in this case the criminal justice system, perpetuates cycles of abuse and (re)traumatises people.

Transformative Justice is vital for understanding and exploring societal attitudes to justice, and to engage with difficult conversations around the role that communities can play in addressing the harms associated with the actions of people within them.

Key findings

Through focus groups, researchers heard how opportunities to support women involved in the Criminal Justice System had been missed.

For example, poor communication between agencies had resulted in men with injunctions against their former partners being housed nearby; the feelings of powerlessness this evoked led many women to seek retaliation, thereby perpetuating the cycle of violence and harm (punishment). Because of their shared experiences, women in both focus groups showed empathy and understanding towards each other, and this served to create a sense of solidarity and a desire to give and receive mutual support.

The research indicates that Transformative Justice does have the potential to facilitate social cohesion and promote equality within local communities; among workshop participants, it was also found to promote greater understanding of the wider social causes of criminalisation and reflection on the accountability of the wider community.

Given the limited number of women with convictions (and/or other lived experience of contact with the Criminal Justice System) who participated in the project, researchers were unable to confirm that Transformative Justice effectively supports them to reintegrate and resettle into their local
communities; however, researchers were confident that there was a role for communities in supporting women with convictions as part of wider strategies.

Engaging, hearing and responding to the voices of those with lived experience was fundamental in this research. Women with lived experience as victims of crime (including domestic abuse), with criminal convictions, or both felt let down by the Criminal Justice System, reporting that their voices were unheard and their experiences were dismissed.

These shared frustrations were exacerbated by what they perceived to be a sexist system that treats men and women differently based on gendered expectations. Workshop activities with the Hopeful Justice Collective – the self-applied name of the community - participants in the workshops identified the stigmatisation and stereotyping of those involved in offending. Rather than working to address crime, participants expressed the view that these attitudes make it more difficult for people to change their behaviour and exit negative peer groups and/or situations.

While there remains a strong sense of identity and pride within the city of Stoke-on-Trent, common experiences of adversity, most notably trauma and loss, emerged as a key theme from the workshops. These shared challenges appeared
to help galvanise communities. The research team used the term ‘brave spaces’ (Arao & Clemens, 2013) to acknowledge participants’ strength and courage
in entering an unknown space and being willing to share their stories and vulnerabilities with unknown others.

Locally rooted arts approaches enabled workshop participants to explore justice issues collectively and in depth, giving space for the emergence of a range of different views, experiences and questions.

Researchers identified four valuable contributions of deploying creative approaches:
> Engaging communities through creative workshops offered people an artistic language for personal experiences with justice (both within the Criminal Justice System and beyond it to wider experiences of fairness and equality), enabling people to express, acknowledge and understand encounters with harm that are present within their local areas.
> Researchers used arts practice to enable people to imagine, experiment and rehearse alternatives to the state-sanctioned Criminal Justice System, both on an everyday level (e.g. practising accountability in their own relationships) and at a structural level (reimagining systemic responses to violence).
> By using a multi-artform approach (creative writing, performance, visual art, sound) the team required people to interrogate ideas
through different forms of expression, which necessitated a layered evaluation of one’s own position. For example, engagement with the idea of accountability will necessarily be different in a written poem, an embodied movement piece and a visual collage.
> Examining and sharing our experiences of justice can be challenging; creative practice offers a space for dissensus and different positions on justice. Divergent views can be collectively explored in accessible, less exposing and more
expansive ways. More resources – in the form of training and sustainable financial support – are needed to leverage the valuable contributions community arts organisations can make to building the capacity of communities to engage
with questions of justice, accountability and harm.

Researchers found a desire from communities for spaces to discuss and reflect on justice collectively, with participants noting that the Hopeful Justice Collective was, in their experience, a rare dedicated opportunity to work through issues related to harm and accountability.

Attitudes to justice within the Hopeful Justice Collective were diverse and appeared on a spectrum. Some participants believed in the idea of being ‘tough on crime’,
while others were committed to an abolitionist perspective and ethos.1 Despite the significant variation in attitudes, community members were united by an underlying desire to change the system, improve opportunities for rehabilitation, reintegration and resettlement, and to reduce the stigma of criminalisation.

One of the big challenges for Transformative Justice projects is the need to overcome an ingrained reliance upon statutory groups and organisations to intervene and provide support.

Time was also a central theme in the discussions, including the necessity of
allowing time to bring about change. ‘Quick fix’ approaches to community involvement and problem-solving often do not allow sufficient time for people to develop bonds and create the sense of community required to make meaningful
change.

A shared sense of history can be a powerful tool for helping to build empathy and
belonging; it provides a ‘safe’ focus for participants’ conversations, in which they
share aspects of their geographical and social identities, e.g. memories of the area and bygone times.

A shared communal space for people to meet is also an important factor in enabling and empowering them to bond and develop community cohesion. The provision of community meeting places is currently in sharp decline,
and there needs to be greater recognition of the important role of hubs and communal spaces within communities. The transfer of such meeting places as assets to communities opens up opportunities, particularly in low-income areas,
for them to develop their own facilities, uses and 11 programmes of activities within such spaces, providing capacity for enhanced self-efficacy.

The intention of the research team was to gradually hand over leadership roles to Hopeful Justice Collective participants so that the workshops would
continue beyond the scope of the research. Researchers had hoped that the trust that was building within the community and the location of the work on their own doorstep would ease the transition of ownership; however, as the end of the project neared, researchers saw that workshop participants had limited willingness to take on leadership roles.

The reasons for this appeared to be a lack of confidence in their leadership skills combined with feeling overburdened with other life/work commitments. It is important to recognise that taking on a community leadership role entails a significant commitment, and this may be too much for many people and pose a barrier to future engagement.

Words from the project research team:

“Transformative Justice identifies a role communities can play in addressing the complexities of harm and trauma. Our research shows once again that women are repeatedly let down by the criminal justice system. Reports of their experience of violence are too often ignored, driving them to seek justice for themselves. When incarcerated, mothers are separated from their children and sent miles away from home.

“This, coupled with inadequate technology in the prison estate, makes it difficult to maintain caring and supportive relationships. In doing so, and in accordance with Transformative Justice assertions, the state and criminal justice system perpetuates the harm women have experienced. This research has demonstrated that using an arts-based approach, underpinned by Transformative Justice principles, can create 'brave spaces' for people to share their experiences of trauma to build more united communities.”
Dr Tirion E Havard. London South Bank University

“It is time for radical change in the use of imprisonment as a punishment for women. This research adds further evidence to the need for alternative provisions. Supporting communities to support others, including women with convictions, to facilitate cohesion and integration, is a key recommendation from this research. Local communities, such as the one involved in this research, who named themselves the Hopeful Justice Collective, should be central to changing conversations around and social attitudes towards justice. Trauma awareness, physical spaces and time are essential if we are to transform justice for all.”
Chris Magill, University of Brighton.
Short titleWomen with convictions
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date5/09/224/09/23

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