How about a thread about non-punitive accountability? THREAD…

First: the most important thing to understand about accountability is, as @prisonculture says, accountability can't be imposed, it can only be taken. All we can do is provide conditions for people to take accountability.

Providing those conditions REQUIRES that we understand the difference between punishment and accountability. Punishment is DONE TO someone; accountability requires actions DONE BY someone.

Key insight from @daniellesered: when we harm someone, we misuse our power over them. Accountability requires using that power rightly to make amends. But punishment is about taking away power. Punishment actually IMPEDES accountability.

Psychiatrist James Gilligan offers this: punishment reduces guilt feelings while increasing shame feelings. Punishment REPLACES guilt with shame. Shame paralyzes and impedes accountability work.

The tension this implies about accountability is that accountability work starts with a space of non-judgmental compassion. We have to be able to listen non-judgmentally in order to provide shame-free spaces where people can take accountability.

Of course, we can still exclude people from certain spaces/communities for safety. BUT when we do so, we have (I believe) a responsibility to provide alternate spaces for accountability work to happen.

Accountability occurs in relationships. That's the insight of the Pod Mapping from the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective: https://batjc.wordpress.com/pods-and-pod-mapping-worksheet/ They ask the essential question: who are the people you could rely on for accountability when you have done harm?

Providing those "pod" relationships is essential. And most of us don't have people we can turn to when we do harm.

This is a place where I think the church SHOULD have essential resources to offer: although in practice I almost never hear anything about "accountability" in church. I think that's because our theology is colonized with a punishment model.

We only think in terms of punishment and its forgiveness. But accountability is on another axis; it's not about what's done to us (by God or anyone else) but about what we do in response.

What does accountability look like in the church? It looks like building spaces for those who have done harm. In my tradition, we have that resource in confession. Why do I want to normalize confession? Because my confessor is in my "pod" for accountability if I do harm!

It looks like building safe spaces for those who have been harmed, too. It looks like having communities that are "big" enough to support those who have done harm and those who have been harmed in separate spaces.

Holding ourselves accountable is hard work. Providing space for others to be accountable is tiring work. To do both, we need to interrogate our reliance on the easy-but-ineffective tools of punitiveness.

And our reliance on the theological narratives that uphold punishment as normal or necessary.

In summary: Build alternate non-judgmental spaces for accountability work. Develop relationships with those who can hold you accountable when you do harm. PRACTICE. Normalizing talking about accountability in community spaces, including religious ones.