Beyond Punishment: A Critical and Interpretive Phenomenology of Accountability

State responses to interpersonal violence in the US have long been focused on punishment and prison. Over the past decade, significant efforts have been made to challenge the role of incarceration and punishment in US society. While opposition to punitive responses to interpersonal violence have been marginal, there are growing efforts to challenge the primacy of punishment and incarceration. In its place, non-punitive approaches to justice are practiced and promoted, including restorative and transformative justice, which see accountability as a primary goal rather than punishment. Accountability has been theorized and researched largely from the perspective of survivors of harm and there is limited research on the accountability-taking by people who have caused harm. Given the lack of research and the importance of self-determination and agency in accountability-taking for people who have caused harm, this study explores the experiences of accountability and accountability-taking among people who have committed serious violence. This study focuses on men who committed homicide, spent more than 10 years in prison, participated in a restorative process while in prison, and have since come home.

This study used critical and interpretive phenomenology to explore accountability and accountability-taking as understood through the lived subjective experiences of individuals who experienced it. Critical phenomenology prioritizes attention to experiences of marginalization, power, and oppression. This is of particular relevance given the focus of this study. Critical phenomenology is in part about the practice of “restructuring the world” towards more liberatory possibilities. This study aims to leverage the work of description that critical and interpretive phenomenology allows and to create more liberatory possibilities for addressing violence. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 men recruited through a local non-profit organization and followed the interpretive phenomenological methods of data analysis as developed by Miner-Romanoff (2012).

In this study, I learned about the lives of men who committed homicide and their journeys to accountability beginning from when they committed the crime through their incarceration and to their reentry. This study found that pathways to accountability and accountability-taking are diverse and for most participants include a mosaic of supports including quality programs inside prison and professional therapeutic support, access to higher education and opportunities for work and leadership, and relationships among people who are incarcerated. While the study found that there is no singular approach to realizing accountability, the study demonstrated the importance of how non-judgmental space and relationships allowed participants to share more deeply about the violence they committed, and to feel remorse and a genuine desire to make amends. The study also examined themes of hiding, and of time, and how social structures and individual relationships to these themes can hinder and support accountability-taking.

This study is an important contribution to the scholarship on accountability and restorative and transformative justice. It explores the experiences of accountability-taking from the people who lived it, offering critical insights into growing liberatory approaches to violence that are responsive to the needs of all involved.