TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE READINGS

Our reading circle provides a space for us to explore and unpack various topics from an intersectional and critical lens. This September, we'll be launching a circle to engage with writings and materials on topics such as abolition transformative justice, community accountability, restorative justice and alternatives to carceral and prison systems for addressing harm and violence.

We seek to develop a critical understanding of these frameworks and their application, particularly to South Asian contexts, both within the diaspora and ‘at home’. We recognise that caste, race, gender, indigeneity, and religious identities have often been the basis of over-criminalisation of certain bodies. And that, in order to counter the disparate and disproportionate harm that the carceral state can inflict upon them, social movements led by those who are most marginalsied have endeavoured to develop mechanisms to address that harm without resorting to the police or other violent institutions.

Objectives

To understand how existing ideas and systems of justice replicate patterns of harm and oppression.
To unpack what we mean by conflict, harm and abuse in order to meaningfully explore alternative imaginations of justice and accountability.
To engage critically with carceral politics and systems and explore together what an anti-carceral politics could look like, especially in the context of South Asian communities.
To create a co-learning space where we can support one another in finding ways to imagine alternative justice frameworks.
To explore ways to use our learnings to critically engage with wider political and societal change in our respective areas.