This paper considers lessons recent debates concerning transitional and transformative justice, and surrounding transformative reparations, could offer to discussions regarding reparations for transatlantic slavery. Even transitional justice programmes aiming to provide transformative reparations in the form of development programmes (such as healthcare, education and housing provision) have enabled governments to avoid addressing structural causes of inequalities. The paper argues that calling for reparations for transatlantic slavery in the form of development projects is potentially regressive. Framing development programmes as reparations, as parts of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Ten Point Plan for reparations do, risks presenting these as necessary only because of powerful states' duty to make amends for past wrongdoing. The paper calls for advocates of reparations for transatlantic slavery to be more explicit in demarcating the backward-and forward-looking foundations of their claims. The importance of symbolic and non-financial reparations ought to be more explicitly highlighted as a potential contributor to the social repair of transatlantic slavery's harmful legacies. Moreover, distributive justice should be explicitly emphasised as being necessary to realise the present-day and future rights of