From Taking to Giving Account: Narrative Frameworks of Accountability in Transformative Justice Responses to Gendered Violence
Abstract
How do community-based responses to gender-based violence (GBV) imagine and implement perpetrator responsibility outside the criminal legal system? Drawing on participatory research with the transformative justice movement, I articulate a model of accountability called giving account , a narrative, qualitative approach that contrasts with the retributive, quantitative logics of taking account . I compare how these two models define harm, attribute responsibility, and proscribe desistance for GBV. Giving account repurposes a method often relegated to ‘individual’ desistance theory – narrative – as a vehicle for integrating individual agency and structural forces. In so doing, it brings a feminist and anti-racist lens to narrative criminology.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies
Crime Patterns and Interventions
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Feminist Criminology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 272–291
- Publication date
- 4 May 2026
- Language
- EN