Envisioning just futures: Building an intersectional feminist movement to challenge criminalization

Day 1 3pm 2 hours English

Criminalization – long used to maintain and sustain power – is increasingly being used as a tactic by anti-gender and anti-democracy forces, through state and non-state mechanisms. These tactics include attacks on activism and freedom of expression, erosion of bodily autonomy and regulation of sexuality and gender, increased policing of borders, and restrictions on movement and migration. In this context, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that across five continents, prison populations are growing.

The criminal legal system is generally deemed to have four objectives: Deterrence, Retribution/Restitution, Incapacitation and Rehabilitation. We are interested in what we see as a fifth implicit objective: criminalization grants states and dominant social groups the expressive power to uplift some narratives over others.

We see how criminalization serves as a way to “mark” certain groups or populations as deserving of punishment and as a way of justifying both state and non-state violence towards them. Research shows that criminalization has a long-lasting impact on the communities that are its targets, ranging from poorer physical and mental health outcomes and inter-generational effects such as entrenched poverty.

Furthermore, carceral policies are costly to the state and divert necessary funds from social welfare systems, such as healthcare, education, and public infrastructure. In addition, they are not effective at addressing or preventing harm. The impact of criminalization falls ultimately on rights, democracy and peace, by authorizing the over-reach of the state and of dominant social groups.

Despite this, an increasing number of feminist and social justice groups have sought results and influence by advocating for harsher criminalization – e.g. to address gender-based violence, hate crimes, child, early and forced marriage, female genital cutting – despite the fact that there is little evidence to suggest that these work, and growing evidence that they cause harm.

These strategies often misguidedly aim to make criminalization “work for us”. Key questions: What are key criminalization trends impacting feminist, human rights and allied movements in Asia right now? How can movements work together to reduce movement, social and state reliance on criminalization tactics, as well as against carceral and punitive logics?