Challenging co‐optive criminalisation: Feminist‐centred decarceration strategies for interpersonal and sexualised violence

Abstract

Feminism and prison abolitionism are not theoretically or politically homogenous, and yet in their mainstream versions they are often situated at polar ends of the debate on how to respond to domestic and sexualised violence. The disproportionately gendered nature of sexualised and interpersonal violence has largely centralised such abuses in feminist movements. However, histories of abolitionism -particularly in continental Europe -have largely failed to address the severity of this violence and its impacts. In this article, we highlight the implications of so-called 'carceral' feminism on ending sexualised and interpersonal violence, while addressing key -and reasonable -critiques of abolitionism. Our central argument is that criminal justice has failed to significantly reduce and/or end sexualised or interpersonal violence. As such, we explore feminist-centred, restorative, and transformative alternatives, not only to prison, but to societies that continue to embed systematic levels of sexualised and interpersonal violence.

Challenging Anti-Carceral Feminism: Criminalisation, Justice and Continuum Thinking

“…There is a growing body of work, for example, investigating the use of restorative justice processes for domestic and sexual violence (Daly, 2006;McGlynn et al, 2012;Ptacek, 2010;Westmarland et al, 2018;Zinsstag & Keenan, 2017), with the aim of shifting perceptions away from conventional justice approaches. Further work emphasises transformative justice processes providing the accountability and vindication survivors seek, but without the potentially harmful and traumatising effects of criminal justice systems (Kim, 2018;Dixon & Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2020;Davis et al, 2022;Pali & Canning, 2022). This emphasis on justice as beyond conventional understandings of criminal justice is echoed in research with survivors in many different contexts (Antonsdóttir, 2020;Daly, 2017;Holder, 2015Holder, , 2018Jülich, 2006;Keenan, 2014;Zinsstag & Keenan, 2017).…”