Transformative justice and restorative justice: Gender-based violence and alternative visions of justice in the United States
| Author | Mimi E. Kim |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758020970414 |
| Subject Matter | Special section articles |
Special section article
Transformative justice
and restorative justice:
Gender-based violence and
alternative visions of justice
in the United States
Mimi E. Kim
California State University, Long Beach, USA
Abstract
In the United States, the contemporary feminist movement against gender-based violence started
in the early 1970s, just as ideologies and policies supporting mass criminalization launched what
became a five-fold rise in U.S. rates of incarceration. Since the new millennium, people of color
have taken the lead in re-envisioning fundamental notions of justice given the dramatic backdrop of
mass incarceration and the recent upsurge in prison abolitionist possibilities. Central to this
reformulation has been a social justice critique that recognizes the intersection of gender-based
violence and other forms of interpersonal violence with the violence of the state, most con-
centrated within U.S. carceral institutions. While the U.S. roots of violence as well as resistance to
this violence extend back to the earliest days of colonial occupation, the contemporary manifes-
tation of the anti-violence struggle has taken on the labels of restorative justice and, more recently,
transformative justice. This conceptual paper relies upon historical analysis of the contemporary
anti-violence movement, secondary legal literature, and insider social movement knowledge to
trace recent trends in the movement to redefine notions of justice in its application to gender-
based violence, the contrasting trajectories of restorative justice and transformative justice, and
the liberatory vision and practices of transformative justice.
Keywords
Gender-based violence, restorative justice, transformative justice, mass incarceration, feminism
Corresponding author:
Professor Mimi E. Kim, School of Social Work, California State University, Long Beach, SSPA 137, 1250 Bellflower Blvd.,
Long Beach, CA 90840, USA.
Email: Mimi.Kim@csulb.edu
International Review of Victimology
2021, Vol. 27(2) 162–172
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758020970414
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