Fatuma Mukombola

By Mary Lee Harvey Dircks
Photo by Ron Coleman, C4 Photography

Transformative justice (TJ) and restorative justice (RJ) are terms making a big buzz locally and nationally. They appear interchangeable and may suggest to some a softer punishment for criminals, yet this is not true.

Rather, these initiatives not only insist on greater accountability, but also add elements of healing and prevention of future harm that most punitive justice practices alone lack.

“While restorative and transformative justice share similarities, they are not the same,” said Fatuma Mukombola, co-founder and chief operations officer for Bloom, a local non-profit organization that serves refugees, immigrant communities and underserved children.

“Restorative justice emphasizes repair; transformative justice emphasizes both repair and systemic change,” Mukombola said. Restorative justice focuses on repairing harm through dialogue, accountability and healing between the person harmed and the person who caused harm. “Transformative justice seeks not only to repair relationships but also to address and change the root causes that allowed harm to occur,” Mukombola said. “Transformative justice is a political framework and approach that seeks to respond to violence without creating more violence.”

Mukombola is a co-researcher teaming up with the Women’s Fund of Omaha to conduct a new study looking at ways transformative justice can impact gender/power-based violence in the greater Omaha area.

“This initiative aims not only to produce a report, but also to build momentum for lasting cultural and systemic shifts in how our community addresses harm,” she said.

Transformative justice is a “circle way of doing things” with community accountability as the central piece, according to Mukombola. The person who caused harm and the person who was harmed come together with a mediator for open dialogue to encourage accountability and provide an opportunity to move beyond the harm that was caused, she explained. “Survivors of harm benefit by having their voices heard, their needs centered, and opportunities for healing beyond the courtroom,” she said. “People who cause harm benefit from accountability that does not strip away their humanity but instead encourages behavioral change.”

The research project used a “participatory action research” (PAR) process where a team of co-researchers (of which Mukombola was one of them) collaborated with researchers from several national universities on the RJ and TJ stands of research. It’s important to elevate the community aspects of this research practice. Long way of saying please revise the start of this sentence. shows that communities benefit by building stronger trust, reducing cycles of violence, and creating practices that prevent more violence from happening in the future. “Overall, this approach reduces reliance on systems that disproportionately harm marginalized communities,” she adds.

“One thing that stood out to me while having conversation with community members was that most victims did not feel comfortable involving the legal justice system because they feared more trouble would come their way—maybe having their kids taken away or the police not taking the claims seriously,” Mukombola says.

One convening participant shared this story: “The last time he called the police on me, they stayed there with me and let me get my stuff and get out, but the time before that, they took his side.”

Mukombola said it’s important to keep people together so they feel safer in their own communities, and that we must have equitable responses to harm.

“When we talk about domestic violence specifically, where something happens that is not enough for the police to step in—a push here, a shove there—but you recognize there is a problem, we want you to have alternatives that can help you navigate the accountability piece and help you to deal with the behavior.”

In a domestic violence situation, the TJ process involves asking questions to discover the root causes that brought the individual to this point of harm, Mukombola said.

“How did it get to a point where he/she is harming her/him? Was there alcohol or drugs involved? Is there alcohol or drug abuse present? Does he/she have anger issues to be dealt with? TJ is not focused on keeping the two together but rather on each person working on themselves to be healthy and address underlying causes and conditions, and to comprehend the extent of harm done not only to one person, or one relationship, but kids, friends and extended family on both sides. They need to understand that now an entire community is destroyed because of one action,” Mukombola said.

Harm done can be as big as a life lost or bruises, bones broken, inability to function or go to work, and lasting psychological issues for everyone involved. “The person who caused harm needs to understand that they don’t just hit and then forget about it. It goes deeper than that,” Mukombola said. “TJ forces you to look beyond your actions and find the source of your anger and for the behavior that you are dealing with.”

People are so used to the punitive justice system, where when harm occurs the perpetrator is put in jail, she said. “And they think, ‘Now I am OK.’ No help is sought out, no recovery on either side, and the person who caused harm is out six months or so later and returns to the same community and the same people and nothing has changed.”

When restorative justice and transformative justice work hand-in-hand, she said, we see more long-term benefits after release from jail. “If TJ is applied while they are in jail so they can be working on themselves, then when they come out, they’re going to have a better understanding of their behavior.”

Communities in which TJ develops naturally can be found among extended families, neighborhoods, church groups and cultural groups. The support these groups provide can be pivotal as they allow individuals to continue working on themselves to improve their lives.

“Transformative justice is happening, but we don’t see it because we don’t know the term,” Mukombola said. “If we keep seeing TJ being practiced more and more, that will be a beautiful sight.”

Mukombola is from Zambia, and in speaking with other immigrants from other continents, she finds the common thread of community cohesiveness and accountability that TJ describes echoes the way many villages function.

“This really is what it’s like back home,” she said. “If the Congolese community hears about a Congolese person coming here as a refugee, you will go visit them. You will take them food, take them stuff for their kids. If they need rides, somebody will volunteer to do that. That is a community! That’s something that almost every immigrant/refugee community does because it creates the same way of living that we had in our own countries. It gives you a sense of community and a sense of belonging.”

Accountability to the well-being of the community encourages healthy and responsible behavior, and Mukombola hopes to bring this type of accountability into general practice within communities and the justice system.

“We hope to deepen understanding of alternatives to punitive systems and help our community imagine safer, more equitable responses to harm. The goal is to inform local policy, invest in community-led practices, and shift culture toward accountability, healing and prevention rather than punishment.” W