Summary

Transformative justice (TJ) is a dynamic set of emergent strategies and abolitionist political commitments focused on responding to and transforming violence, harm, and abuse at the root. It encompasses values, beliefs, and community-based responses that aim to do so without resorting to further violence, punishment, or revenge and without relying on state mechanisms (e.g., prisons, police, courts) that produce and reproduce violence. TJ emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, led by and for communities most affected by criminalization and state-sponsored violence. This includes women of color, Indigenous communities, Black communities, people of color communities, immigrant communities, trans and queer communities, disabled communities, poor and low-income communities, sex workers, and youth. As such, TJ is deeply intertwined with the larger abolitionist movement. Its key concepts include recognizing structural violence as a root cause of interpersonal harm and focusing on trauma-informed care for healing justice. It also involves centering disability justice, adopting liberatory harm-reduction methods, and understanding accountability as a complex process involving individual and community aspects. Additionally, TJ embraces emergent strategy in social change, seeing everyday simple interactions as building blocks for complex systems that can foster more just and life-affirming worlds.

While most social workers face institutional constraints, such as mandatory reporting, that prevent them from practicing TJ, the principles of TJ can still inform social work. This TJ-informed social work approach involves shifting away from punitive and surveillance methods in social work to advocate for individual, organizational, community, and systemic changes consistent with liberatory harm reduction. Social workers can integrate TJ principles and practices within their professional roles to better align their practice with their ethical commitments. For example, social workers can differentiate between politicized and charity-based approaches to social services, learn about and integrate pod practices in their personal and professional lives, and commit to cultivating a TJ mindset. These actions could contribute to the broader aims of both social work and TJ while carefully avoiding the appropriation of TJ principles.