Generative Justice

Crime is a source, a sign and a symptom of relational problems. Conventional responses in the justice system often tend to exacerbate rather than resolve these problems — meaning that both crime and criminal justice tend to damage social solidarity, storing up other social problems. 

This project draws on the extensive experience and skills of the Co-Investigators and their networks (academic and activist) to explore the concept of ‘Generative Justice’ and to devise an approach to studying and developing it together. 

By ‘Generative Justice’, we refer to prefigurative, emerging practices in a range of existing communities, movements and organisations (with which we are connected) that seem to respond to both crime and state punishment in ways that are generative of social relations characterised by increased solidarity.  

We believe that by developing a network of scholars and activists to study these dynamics and to further develop these practices, we might imagine a different way of ‘doing’ justice that is inherently more inclusive and solidaristic; and which holds the promise of a safer and fairer society.