[1.] The current justice system and the common understanding of justice today is retributive justice : a system that responds to harm and “criminal” behavior through punishment.

The logic is that incarcerated folk deserve punishment and that punishment will deter them from causing harm.

[2.] Transformative justice is more concerned with questioning whether the conditions in place before the harm are themselves equitable and just, and looks to redress them in order to prevent further harm within the community.

[3.]Transformative Justice and Community Accountability are responses to violence which:

• Do not create more harm/violence (e.g. prisons, the police, the criminal legal system) and that do not perpetuate systemic violence (e.g. oppression, harmful societal norms, vigilantism, criminalization).
• Work to meet immediate needs for justice (e.g. safety, healing, connection, accountability); while also working towards a long-term vision of liberation (e.g. a world without prisons and oppression where sexual violence doesn’t exist.)
• Work to address current incidences of violence in ways that will shift the conditions that allowed that violence to happen, in ways that prevent future incidences of violence and ultimately end violence.
• Understand that individual acts of harm do not only have individual impact, but also have collective impact and therefore need to be solved collectively.