How do the harms of crime and criminalisation impact interpersonal, community, and social relationships? How and when can those relationships be reimagined, rebuilt and repaired as part of healing, recovery and the search for justice? And can solidarity, rather than retribution, become the foundation of our approach?

The criminal justice systems of ‘advanced’ liberal democracies tend to both individualise and dichotomise: criminal or law-abiding, guilty or innocent, victim or offender, responsible or not responsible, us or them. This flattening of human and social complexity forecloses forms of healing, rehabilitation, and recovery that concentrate on the relational and structural aspects of justice.

Building on practical experience drawn from innovative projects and communities in many diverse settings, Generative Justice brings together academics, practitioners, educators, and justice-involved people to begin the work of fundamentally rethinking our conception of justice. The result is a rich body of alternative approaches to justice work, ones that foreground relationality, recognition, care, and solidarity rather than punishment or retribution.

Editors Fergus McNeill (Professor of Criminology and Social Work at the University of Glasgow), Mary Corcoran (Professor of Criminology at Keele University) and Beth Weaver (Professor of Criminal and Social Justice at the University of Strathclyde) will be joined by Anne Fox, Chair of Trustees at Unlock; and Ella Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Greenwich.

A Q&A will follow, moderated by Christopher Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.