Transformative Justice Theory And The Department Of Homeland Security

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In 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security. This new federal agency, with its cabinet-level rank, was created with a singular mission- to protect the United States homeland from terrorism (Patel et al., 2022). Unofficially, the department was to reflect Bush’s mission to “bring our enemies to justice or to bring justice to our enemies.” As this agency’s work has been carried out over the past two decades, it is debatable whether justice was the foundation of its policies and actions. According to Patel, Levinson-Waldman, and Panduranga (2022), the department of homeland security has “aggressively targeted Muslims, communities of color, and social justice …show more content…

Transformative justice theory is a criminal justice theory that “recognizes that oppression is at the root of all forms of harm, abuse, and assault (New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, 2022). This theory incorporates a structural approach that examines the root causes of crime and inequality within social, political, and economic systems (CriminalJustice.com, 2019). Transformative justice theory faults traditional approaches to crime response and crime prevention (CriminalJustice.com, 2019). Therefore, it makes sense to consider whether any potential course corrections in the strategies and approaches of the Agency 2 might be strengthened by the incorporation of some of the principles of transformative justice theory. In 1958, George B. Vold, a conflict criminologist, explained that crime is an outcome of political conflicts between groups that have power versus those that do not and are disenfranchised (Nocella, 2011). According to Nocella (2011), when prisons do not work, the power of surveillance and stigmatizing labels are the favored methods of social control used to reinforce normalcy (Nocella,