This transformative justice training school is offered by OPIRG-Ottawa where participants will recieve a certificate upon completion of the 8 week training. We will create a space to interrogate the systemic roots and harmful impacts of the criminal legal system and co-generate knowledge about transformative justice through healing, accountability, safety, reparations, and collective action. We will then offer training resources and tools for people to build skills to facilitate transformative justice processes for conflict and harm that are participant-driven, human-centred, trauma-informed, intersectional, anti-oppressive, decolonial, and strength-based. The training school will use a hybrid model (in-person and virtual). The training school will cover:
– Systemic issues that produce marginalization (colonialism, racism, classism, sexism, heteropatriarchy, and ableism) which are social, economic, cultural, and political. Individual behaviours reproduce systemic oppression and reify the existing system.
– How the current criminal legal system is focused on punishing, surveilling, exploiting, othering, and benefiting the powerful. Racial profiling and police violence, adversarial justice is white supremacist, prison industrial complex (prisons the new form of slavery), criminalization and mass incarceration of BIPOC, disabled, 2SLGBTQI+, poor people, migrants, dehumanization in the police and prison system (monopoly over the use of violence, solitary confinement, hyper-policing impoverished communities, and racial minorities).
– Carceral abolition as a framework to dismantle the punitive injustice system and build transformative justice and mutual aid.
– Transformative justice as a political movement and approach that address individual and structural harm.
– Tensions and challenges of transformative justice to work outside the criminal legal system but still in a capitalist and settler colonial context.
– Examples, scenarios, and tools for facilitating TJ processes with community members and with the consent of survivors, people who cause harm, and others impacted.
Dates and Times
Tuesday, 31 January 2023 2:00 PM
Tuesday, 7 February 2023 2:00 PM
Tuesday, 14 February 2023 2:00 PM
Tuesday, 28 February 2023 2:00 PM
Tuesday, 7 March 2023 2:00 PM
Tuesday, 14 March 2023 2:00 PM
Tuesday, 21 March 2023 2:00 PM
Tuesday, 28 March 2023 2:00 PM
Week 1: Systemic Issues in the Criminal Legal System
Readings:
Systemic Issues in the criminal legal system
DuVernay, A. (2016). 13TH. Netflix. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8
Perring, S., Bradley, J., & Basualdo, M. (2021). The roots of the prison industrial complex in Canada. Ontario Public Interest Research Group-University of Ottawa. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tGsI0tyCUUN8c_iHUiuGo1y64i1Ivd5g/view
Week 2 – Mass Incarceration of Indigenous and Black Peoples
Readings:
Reece, R. (June 25, 2020). Carceral Redlining: White Supremacy is a Weapon of Mass Incarceration for Indigenous and Black Peoples in Canada. Yellowhead Institute. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2020/06/25/carceral-redlining-white-supremacy-is-a-weapon-of-mass-incarceration-for-indigenous-and-black-peoples-in-canada/
Week 3: Abolition and Alternative Justice
Readings:
Davis, A. (2003). Are Prisons Obsolete? Chapter 1: Prison Reform or Prison Abolition. https://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf
Minus, M. (January 11, 2019). Transformative justice: A brief introduction. https://transformharm.org/tj_resource/transformative-justice-a-brief-description/
Morris, M. (1976). Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists. Diminishing/Dismantling the Prison System. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapter3.shtml
Readings:
Generation FIVE. (2007). Toward Transformative Justice: A liberatory approach to child sexual abuse and other forms of intimate and community violence (pp. 26-31). Section 2: Principles of Transformative Justice. https://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Generation5_Principles_of_Transformative_Justice.pdf
Week 5: Reflecting on Transformative Justice
Readings:
Punch Up Collective. (August 16, 2016). Planning to be good to each other: Reflections on our accountability framework and how others might develop one. https://www.punchupcollective.org/2016/08/16/planning-to-be-good-to-each-other-reflections-on-our-accountability-framework-and-how-others-might-develop-one/
Week 6: Putting Transformative Justice into Action
Readings:
Simmons, M., Bradley, J., Gallivan, A., & Doyle, A. (March 2021). Conflict resolution and community accountability process. The Criminalization and Punishment Education Project. https://docs.google.com/document/d/12zwjZyXfSJnjijwpKsn1TDUrxIOCdbto/edit
Community Accountability: Emerging Movements to Transform Violence. (2011). Social Justice, 37(4 (122)), 1–11. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41478929
Week 7: Transformative Justice Facilitation
Readings:
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective. Transformative Justice Case Studies. https://batjc.wordpress.com/resources/case-studies/
Creative Interventions Toolkit: A practical guide to stop interpersonal violence. https://www.creative-interventions.org/toolkit/
Kaba, M., & Hassan, S. (2019). Fumbling Towards Repair: A workbook for community accountability facilitators. Project NIA and Just Practice.
Week 8: Practicing Transformative Justice
Readings:
Bernard Center for Research on Women. (2018-2020). Building accountable communities. https://bcrw.barnard.edu/building-accountable-communities/
Incite! (March 5, 2003). Community Accountability Working Document – Principles/Concerns/Strategies/Models. https://incite-national.org/community-accountability-working-document/