Transformative justice is a series of practices and philosophies designed to create change in social systems. Mostly, they are alternatives to criminal justice in cases of interpersonal violence, or are used for dealing with socioeconomic issues in societies transitioning away from conflict or repression. Other fields of practice have adopted transformative justice, including to address groups' work on other social issues and climate justice.
As per the works of American activist Mariame Kaba, transformative justice is a political framework that focuses on community-building and collective solidarity against the repressive mechanisms of the state. First popularized by LGBTQIA2S+, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and otherwise marginalized communities due to their perception that they were unable to rely on the police and the courts to obtain justice after being victimized by interpersonal harm (such as hate crimes, sexual assaults, and domestic violence), it prioritizes the importance of relationships with oneself, one's community, and one's environment. The lineage of contemporary strands of transformative justice practices remains rooted in other anti-carceral and abolitionist social movements that emanate from Black, Indigenous and other racialized communities.
Transformative justice divests from traditional methods of state-sanctioned punishment, such as police, prisons, courts and juvenile delinquency programs, as it is premised on the assumption that these institutions inflict more harm on individuals through surveillance and social control, which fosters even more violence and harm both within prisons and communities on the outside.
Transformative justice also rests on the belief that interpersonal harm reflects systemic and institutional dimensions of oppression. For instance, sexual assault mirrors the patriarchal conception of women as devoid of personal agency. Therefore, transformative justice asserts that in order to eradicate interpersonal violence, the systemic structures of power (such as patriarchy, cisheteronormativity, racism, ableism, and colonialism) must also be dismantled.