Punishment is Never Justice
We do not ask the questions that are central to transformative justice: Why has harm occurred? Who is responsible (beyond the individual perpetrator — as in, how is community implicated)? How can this harm be prevented in the future?
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We must invest deeply and fervently in the dignity of human life. We must not give in to the urge to do harm, even in justice’s name. We must recognize, name, and transform the instinct to humiliate, harm, and coerce those we see as bad or as wrongdoers. No one is disposable.
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The community must accept its own responsibility for producing, condoning, and reproducing violence. We cannot spend years — decades — in community spaces watching people act badly and hurt each other, and making excuses for them, and then suddenly turn around and act shocked when an individual names that violence. We cannot pretend that we had no hand in covering up, minimizing, and even encouraging violence.
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We must encourage love — love that is radical, love that digs deep. Love that asks the hard questions, that is ready to listen to the whole story and keep loving anyway. Love for the survivors, love for the perpetrators, love for the survivors who have perpetrated and the perpetrators who have survived. Love for the community that has failed us all. We live in poison. The planet is dying. We can choose to consume each other, or we can choose love.