Toward A Decolonial Feminist Critique Of Penalty Presented by: Silvana Tapia Date: October 14, 2021 Some Questions To Begin: - The turn to criminal law as a solution to gender inequality: what is our role, as feminists, in producing this carceral response, and how might we produce other, better responses? - What are the most common answers we see in Euro-American feminist literature regarding these questions? - What do we lose sight of when using analytical terms such as “governance feminism"? - What happens when we de-center the US and the Global North? Beyond neoliberalism, conservativism and co-optation as the main explanatory factors of feminist "complicity” in expanding penalty Ecuador - Embarked on an anti-neoliberal and decolonial path 2007-2017.  Prompts us to question the often-assumed association between neoliberalism and penal expansion.  Some feminists endorsed this project and were part of the governing coalition. What did they have in common with conservatives? - Venality has been thriving for longer than we think, including in the domain of VAW. - Laws on VAW against women have not produced carceral expansion as such: attrition rates are very high, with only about 11% of complaints resulting in a conviction. - The turn to criminal law and policy in VAW is gendered) Penal Coloniality  The penal apparatus before neoliberalism  Colonial morality and racialized population management.  Use of venality to address domestic violence.  Example: criminalization of alcoholism  Later:  Continuity of the "non-violent patriarchy" discourse to protect the traditional family.  Human rights converge with this.  This is the "common sense". Coercive Human Rights - Transnational human rights instruments justify, or even require, circularity, with campaigns against impunity focusing heavily on the creation and enforcement of new offences. - Present in Ecuador's "decolonial" constitution. - Left-leaning regimes and social movements, with human rights as their lingua franca, have an investment in criminalization. Rights-Based Venality / Constitutional Criminal Law  A paradigm adopted by liberal legalism to "constitutionalize" criminal justice and protect the human rights of plaintiffs and defendants  It appears to soften the power of punishment, and rationalize it. As a result, many progressives, including feminists, embrace the penal response. A Colonial Rights-Based Venality  Even in the context of left-wing governments, penal expansion in the field of violence against women has been fed by both colonial discourses and the appeal to human rights. Why Interrogate Rights Based Venality? Human rights are afforded a "presumption of benignity", yet... 1. Rights-based venality results in a limited state response to VAW, fixated on th criminal trial, and ineffective for most survivors. 2. Whether in the form of reactionary criminalization or in the apparently more progressive guise of human rights advocacy, liberal legality continues to dominate the public debate about violence against women. 3. These universalized frameworks preclude engagement with different views of justice. The Limits Of "Governance Feminism” And “Carceral Feminism"  Unequal power relations. - Feminist impact is slight and impermanent. - Non-feminist actors reshape proposals. - Example: imposition of party discipline.  Lose the nuances of feminist debates.  Feminist struggles in other part of the world are less visible.  - Latin American Encuentros - Anti-carceral feminist movements Hide the other detrimental effects of criminalization besides penal expansion. Venality is inextricably interwoven with protection and redress in the field of human rights, and this association animates the appeals to criminalize VAW, rather than an “ambition” to inflict suffering on violent men. Where Do We Go From Here? - An epistemic break with liberalism in the form of a decolonial feminist abolitionist agenda. - Let us 'unlearn' and undo rights-based venality, embracing a counter-carceral approach that transcends the pull of liberal legality and reimagines both emancipation and protection through a decolonial feminist lens. - Let us pay more attention to work produced in the Global South, not just as data; as theory. Learn Spanish (and other languages)!