Description
International criminal justice (ICJ) is an imperial formation, and these origins continue to structure its possibilities. Recognising the gendered, racialized, and colonial foundations of ICJ, scholars have advocated for more radical change to this regime. However, when calls for international justice are made, the response still centres international criminal justice and carcerality. Critical legal scholars have highlighted that alternative processes outside of ICJ, but these processes often are subsumed within a conversation that centres carceral, criminal justice. This focus on carceral justice marginalises other forms of justice, neglecting the multitude of processes which existed before, during, and after ICJ. Further, this focus on carcerality entrenches the coloniality of the ICJ regime, with carceral justice an inherently colonial formation. This project takes seriously the call for more radical change within ICJ, mapping genealogies of alternative, anti-carceral organising within ‘international’ processes of justice. Through this genealogy, I work against the ‘newness’ of radical change, highlighting how alternatives have always existed, yet are often ‘lost’ (or ignored) through the centring of ICJ. To decentre ICJ, I map the logics that sustain these anti-carceral calls and should structure new iterations of ‘international’ justice. This mapping relies on archival research alongside interviews with activists involved in anti-carceral, community-based alternatives. In this research, I look within the current (and past) calls for ‘international’ justice to see what already exists, but has been ignored due to the centring of carceral, international justice. This builds on critical scholarship that calls for community-based, decolonial, and abolitionist alternatives to ICJ, and to reimagine how we conduct justice and politics. By (re) connecting domestic political movements to the international, I seek to ‘reimagine’ ‘international’ justice from within.
