Over the past several years, TPI has learned a lot about the justice system and how it impacts the trans community. Our experience began in efforts to work with existing justice systems. Those efforts included police and emergency responder training, working with system liaisons to report problems, advocating for system enhancements like hate crimes laws, and writing policy for both the Dallas sheriff and police.
But we saw our training used abusively as an excuse to claim discrimination doesn’t happen because “we have training.” We saw the police liaison refuse every effort at reporting discrimination and abuse and problem—not some, not most, but every single effort. We saw the sheriff try to cover up keeping a trans person in solitary confinement, which is nothing less that torture, for nine months and deny it until the abused person said she was willing to testify about it. That and pressure from the the Department of Justice helped us get the first trans policy passed within the Dallas sheriff’s office. However, we saw policy passed, but not enforced.
These experiences combined with ongoing communications with increasing numbers of incarcerated trans and queer persons, mostly in Texas, but some across the country, helped us learn the true colors of the “justice” systems as currently implemented. This work was eye-opening, and it prompted our interest in prison abolition, restorative justice, and more broad transformative justice work. We saw the routine abuses, and began documenting violence in a system set up not to rehabilitate in any way, but to simply extend what the justice system claimed was an initial violence with more violence performed under state operations for the profit of those in power.
Our experience led to reading and learning about a growing and evolving approach to social harm—actually a collection of approaches—known as transformative justice. Transformative justice is not a solution to social harm in the way that our current retributive justice is a solution that locks people away and hides the issues from the general public. Transformative justice is more a framework that identifies larger causes of social harm and address those while acknowledging immediate harms, seeking accountability from the person causing harm, and seeking support for the person experiencing harm.
Starting in 2022, TPI will be posting both short and long pieces about these topics in three main subject areas: 1) the system that we currently have and how we got here, 2) how this system adversely impacts trans and queer persons, and 3) culturing a transformative justice framework. These won’t be discussed in order, but we will always identify where the discussion fits in the overall collection. We hope some of these will be of interest, and will encourage you to learn more about the system we currently have, and how to help participate in moving us all forward toward a more humane concept of justice that actually reduces harm.
This work is necessary for trans liberation. It is necessary for the liberation and empowerment of all marginalized communities. If you disagree now, we hope you will join us in this journey exploring the topics, and eventually join us in the work. In solidarity.