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The movement for abolitionist and anti-carceral social work in the United States has gained momentum, leading social work practitioners and scholars to explore restorative justice (RJ) and transformative justice (TJ) as responses to violence. Guided by Kim’s (2020) abolitionist feminist framework, our scoping review scrutinizes how carceral logic might infiltrate discourses and methodologies aimed at interrupting the reach of the retributive carceral state (Richie & Martensen, 2020), resulting in “carceral accommodation.” A critical research approach is appropriate for the review because it facilitates 'making strange,’ questioning, and de-familiarizing normalized assumptions within a field of knowledge (Shklovsky, 1917/1965). 'Making strange' reveals the often-unexamined power dynamics that govern daily life and influence knowledge creation. The review aims to clarify the landscape of RJ and TJ practices in light of carceral accommodation pressures to enhance anti-carceral and abolitionist social work praxis.
Methods:
Using the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology (Peters et al., 2017), we reviewed literature published in English before September 1, 2021, including academic and grey literature spanning all age groups. The review focused on the sources, settings, implementers, and producers of RJ and TJ knowledge. Data were extracted with a standardized form and organized in EndNote and Excel, with content coding for carceral accommodation or level of alignment with anti-carceral liberatory approaches (Kim, 2020).
Results:
The review yielded 407 items—159 academic and 248 grey literature items. Academic sources often contextualized RJ within the criminal legal system (55%), followed by community settings (23%) and religious organizations (14%). However, after applying codes based on Kim’s (2020) critical framework, a significant portion of RJ efforts in community settings (68%) was coded as carceral accommodation due to their ties with the criminal legal system. Grey literature also showed limited alignment with anti-carceral approaches, with only 26% of items moderately or highly consistent with anti-carceral RJ or TJ principles. Among 114 academic scholars producing knowledge about RJ and TJ, 97 (85%) are RJ scholars only, and 11 (10%) write about RJ and TJ. The primary disciplines contributing to RJ's academic literature were law, criminology, and psychology. Among TJ scholars, there was no clear disciplinary pattern. Social work scholars are underrepresented, with only five RJ scholars (4%) trained in social work and only one social work scholar writing about both RJ and TJ.
Conclusions and Implications:
The review supports Kim's (2020) argument that RJ often serves as carceral accommodation rather than a genuine departure from punitive systems and is, therefore, more widely implemented and addressed in scholarship than TJ. This matters, especially in the context of evidence-based practice priorities in social work. To advance anti-carceral social work praxis, we recommend: 1) Employing Kim’s carceral accommodation framework to critically analyze the interplay between RJ, TJ, and carceral systems. 2) Establishing community research partnerships to advance anti-carceral interventions.3) Adopting a Critical Media Literacy approach to scrutinize RJ and TJ literature's production, interpretation, and impact. 4) Using a mixed-methods participatory approach in all stages of RJ and TJ-informed intervention design and evaluation, ensuring alignment with an abolitionist feminist perspective.