Violence, abuse and racially minoritised communities in the UK: Developing a theoretical perspective on justice

• In Event: Gender, Crime and Justice Working Group Panel 12: Gender and Justice

Abstract

This paper draws on ongoing and completed research into violence and abuse for racially minoritised communities to develop an intersectional conceptual perspective on the meanings of justice for victims/survivors of these forms of justice. Justice is understood as going well beyond the prevailing formal criminal and civil systems of justice, including restorative justice and use of religious arbitration, and represent a mix of tangible and intangible needs for recognition, restitution and reconstitution.
Firstly, we will explore how racially minoritised women and girls in racially minoritised communities are often treated as a homogenous category in legal and policy discourses, while in really experiences of violence and abuse intersect in other ways, such as: religion, gender, sexuality immigration status and age. Secondly, we will explore how gender based abuse against racially minoritised women and girls has been subjected to criminalisation and criminal justice intervention in particular ways that may speak to exoticising forms of abuse seen as endemic or specific to some communities. For example, we are aware that female genital mutilation and forced marriage have been criminalised before more generic forms of abuse, such as domestic abuse.
This paper will explore these issues in the context of the harms and benefits of crimimal justice approaches for different groups of marginalised and minoritised women and girls in the UK. Withdrawing from the criminal justice system process, for example, could indicate positive, self-protective choices by victims/survivors who recognise the type of ‘justice’ on offer is not what, or how, they want, and it may simultaneously be an indictment of the prevailing formal systems and raises the question of what alternatives are available. Therefore, as well as considering the criminal, civil, family, restorative, arbitration and religious councils, we are alert to informal spaces such as inter/intra-family or community attempts to achieve justice.

Author

• Geetanjali Gangoli, Durham University