Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

Abstract

Around the world, policies and laws emphasizing criminal justice have dominated domestic violence interventions for decades. In the United States, certain feminist advocates worked with state actors to develop a primarily criminal justice response to domestic violence. Western influence in the international human rights movement has spread this approach around the world, leading it to become the key means of addressing violence against women. However, critics argue that the overreliance on the criminal justice system is a key failure of the anti-domestic-violence movement, with some referring to the strain of feminism promoting prosecution as "carceral feminism. " The carceral approach is increasingly criticized for failing to help and sometimes causing outright harm to its supposed beneficiaries. In place of carceral policies, advocates have begun to push for community-based restorative and transformative justice alternatives to prosecution. This Article examines Uganda's use of reconciliation, a restorative justice mechanism, to respond to and prevent domestic violence. Uganda's approach is an instructive example because, unlike the subjects of other case studies, it is a state sanctioned, nationwide mechanism intentionally made available to all domestic violence victims. Reconciliation in Uganda gives advocates an opening to meet the expressed needs of victims of domestic violence, as well as to effect normative change. This is important not just in Uganda, but beyond its borders. Western countries, many of which have already seen restorative justice experiments occur on a smaller scale, can take note of the possibilities available with widespread restorative justice mechanisms. Whereas historically the international rights movement has spread ideas and concepts from the West to the rest of the world, the potential of restorative justice indicates that at least in some cases, justice would be better served by reversing the flow of ideas.

Publication Citation

42 Harv. J. L. & Gender 123 (2019).

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