Abolitionist Futures' Gender-Based Violence Resource
With conviction rates for sexual violence described as ‘a lottery’ by the Victims Commissioner, survivors being subjected to ‘digital strip searches’ as part of investigations, and a disturbing number of police officers being convicted of sexual assault and domestic violence, it’s not surprising that many survivors do not trust the current system when it comes to addressing and ending gender-based violence. A 2023 survey revealed that only 10% of respondents believed that the criminal justice system was effective, a lack of faith which makes it unsurprising that reporting rates remain low - a telling example, according to Rape Crisis England and Wales, is that 5 out of 6 women and 4 out of 5 men do not report being raped.
At first glance, these statistics seem demoralising. If the criminal justice system is the only option for tackling gender-based violence, and it is failing so comprehensively in doing so, then do we have to accept a world where sexual, domestic, and other forms of gender-based or intimate violence are simply part of life? Do we throw yet more resources into the current system, hoping that more money will move the percentage of charges (2.6% for reported rapes in 2023) up by a few decimal points? Or do we try something different?
Abolitionist Futures, an organisation that advocates for social and transformative justice, want to take a different approach to gender-based violence. This group, which has years of experience in abolitionist organising, recently created a resource for groups that are interested in taking a new approach to gender-based violence; one that rejects the flawed carceral system, and takes a progressive, preventative, and transformative approach that focuses on reducing harm rather than prioritising punishment. Abolitionist Futures launched their new resource in an online event with some fantastic speakers, including academic Alison Phipps, feminist writers Lola Olufemi and Leah Cowan, and Billy, a frontline worker in supporting survivors of gender-based violence.
I’ve been learning about abolitionist strategies for a little while, but still feel like I’m very much at the beginning of my journey, so I was happy to find that the Abolitionist Futures event and resource were perfectly pitched for someone at my stage of learning. During the event, the speakers discussed how it is counter-intuitive to trust the state to reduce harm when so many state structures cause harm - for example, by criminalising homelessness and addiction, and prioritising a carceral system that separates people from their families and communities, leading to isolation and stigmatisation that makes reoffending far more likely.
So what alternatives are there to police and prisons? The speakers discussed multiple options, which the resource goes into in much more depth. Mutual aid and community interventions were two of the foremost suggestions. The resource explores ideas such as community-based night-time safety programmes to help people get home after a night out, and violence de-escalation skills training, where bystanders can intervene to prevent harm before it happens. Another progressive idea that the speakers stressed was that funding for survivor services should not be linked to engagement with the police or courts - Billy drew from their experience as a survivor support worker here, noting that they had spoken to some service users who felt that engaging with the criminal legal system was a major distraction from working on their own healing.
Abolitionist, transformative strategies are often dismissed as pie-in-the-sky, wishful thinking, or an approach that refuses to engage with the seriousness of some harms, but as the resource and the event stressed, the opposite is true. The panel discussed the phenomenal amount being spent on the criminal legal system, such as £400 million going towards the building of a single new prison in Glasgow; imagine what £400 million could fund as part of social schemes designed to end poverty, support communities, and help survivors. Supporters of the carceral system may ask ‘What About the Rapists?’, but as the statistics I cited earlier show, the same question could be asked of our current system - and the current answer is most likely to be ‘the case will be dropped, and the survivor will never see any kind of justice’. An abolitionist approach to gender-based might be a social experiment, but it may be one that would pay off for survivors and communities, and bring us all into a fairer, safer future.
