Workshop at RMIT University Melbourne on An Abolition Movement for International Criminal Law?!

Date- 27-28 June 2024

Mode- Hybrid

International criminal law is a carceral system. It responds to mass atrocities by holding some individuals criminally responsible for these events and then, generally, imprisoning those individuals. In recent years, the structural conditions of international criminal law have been well examined, particularly by critical scholars who have pointed out international criminal law’s ideological grounding in neoliberalism and its relationships to race, global capital, and colonialism and imperialism. Selectivity of cases and situations; particular crimes that fall within the jurisdiction of courts and tribunals while others do not; and international criminal law’s focus on individualised responsibility for typically communal and political acts, are all factors that result in a legal system that criminalises some and exonerates others. This means that race, nationality, class, and gender, are powerful determinants of who will be brought before a court, even more so than the commission of a crime. Now building on these understandings, we might begin to ask: What alternative responses might be imagined to this carceral system? Can we refuse imprisonment and policing as the main response to mass atrocity, and instead seek to understand and respond to the social causes and conditions that cause such mass atrocity? Can we critically ask how (and why) criminal law has become the preeminent ‘legitimate hand of justice’ (A.Y. Davis, G. Dent, E.R. Meiners, and B.E. Richie, Abolition. Feminism. Now. (Haymarket, 2022), at 50), in place of other non-carceral approaches?

Assistance comes from the well-established movement of carceral abolition. This is ‘a tradition, a philosophy, and a theory of change, [which] moves away from a myopic focus on the distinct institution of the prison toward a more expansive vision of the social, political, and economic processes that defined the context within which imprisonment came to be viewed as the legitimate hand of justice’ (Ibid). Abolition ultimately aims to eliminate imprisonment, policing, and surveillance, and to create ‘lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment’ (Ibid). Recent years have seen an uprising in prison and police abolition movements in countries across the world. The Black Lives Matter movement, particular cases of police brutality and murder, an increased understanding of the prison industrial complex and police funding, and Indigenous activism in settler-colonies pointing out the deficiencies in criminal systems, have all seen more people seek out abolitionist approaches. However, these movements seek to challenge domestic criminal justice systems – so how might they apply to international criminal law?

In this spirit, papers are called for that will examine any aspect of the relationship between carceral abolition and international criminal law. Particular questions may include, but are not limited to:

• How the aims of international criminal law might be reconsidered in light of carceral abolition praxis;
• The escalation of international criminal law alongside the agendas of neoliberalism, carceral feminism, and criminalisation;
• The relationships between international criminal law and racial capitalism, class, and militarism;
• International criminal law’s prison conditions, and what abolition movements might teach us about the conditions of incarceration in international criminal law;
• What accounts for recent pushes to extend international criminal liability for ecocide and cybercrimes – what might be gained, or lost, from turning to criminal law to address these phenomena;
• What ‘transformative justice’ might mean in the context of international criminal law;
• Whether an abolitionist approach to international criminal law is even necessary given the existence of other justice mechanisms to address mass atrocities;
• How might we develop a carceral geography and political economy of international criminal law exploring its locations, agents, and beneficiaries;
• What are some of the comparisons and connections between carcerality as a means of criminalising nation-based freedom struggles and the use of international criminal law to stop national liberation movements;
• What else might be possible – what utopian possibilities exist for ‘imagining and building a more humane and democratic society that no longer relies on caging people to meet human needs and solve social problems’? (D.E. Roberts, ‘Abolition Constitutionalism’, 133 Harvard Law Review (2019) 3, at 7-8) and

• How we might progress abolitionist organising in the international criminal law space.

This workshop will be held in a hybrid mode: in person at RMIT University in the centre of naarm/Melbourne, Australia, on the unceded sovereign lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation; and online, during naarm/Melbourne business hours. We will attempt to accommodate international involvement in different time-zones, where we can.

The workshop will be designed to be small, intensive, and with a view to high-quality discussion and paper publication. A Special Issue of the Australian Feminist Law Journal will publish selected papers from the Workshop in 2025.

Participants will be expected to circulate a draft paper of no more than 4,000 words, one month in advance of the workshop (in late May 2024). All participants will then be allocated one other participant’s paper to read in depth, and provide commentary on at the workshop. To facilitate discussion and writing, it is anticipated that a reading pack of key abolitionist literature will also be circulated in advance, for participants to draw on in addition to their research. There may also be sessions involving a deep reading of key piece(s) of abolitionist work.

There will be no cost for workshop participants, thanks to the support of RMIT’s Graduate School of Business and Law. There will be limited additional space for non-presenting participants, who may be asked to make a small contribution towards catering costs.

A major part of this workshop and project is to establish a network of scholars and practitioners who might form a movement for abolition and international criminal law. If you are unable to participate in this workshop, but wish to be part of the broader network, please contact [email protected] to be placed on distribution lists.