The Monsters Were Always Real.
Every Halloween, we gather around our screens to scream at ghosts, vampires, masked killers, and cursed mirrors. But for many of us doing criminal justice reform work, these stories feel eerily familiar; not because we’ve faced literal monsters, but because we’ve spent our lives battling the real horrors of our legal system: mass incarceration, state violence, systemic erasure, and generational trauma.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman reminds us that stories are power. That legends evolve. That trauma echoes. So during this Halloween season, we’re flipping the script. We’re using horror to spotlight truth.
What if the monster under the bed is poverty?
What if the haunting isn’t supernatural, but historical?
What if the final girl never got a second chance?
Here’s how horror helps us confront the monsters in the system.
Horror Is a Mirror: Justice Demands We Look
Horror doesn’t invent fear. It reflects it. The genre has always served as an outlet for cultural anxieties: racism (Get Out), mass surveillance (It Follows), trauma (The Babadook), or even government abandonment (The Purge). These aren’t metaphors for those of us who live in marginalized communities; they’re allegories we’re forced to survive.
Our work in criminal justice reform echoes many of the same themes:
- Monsters created by the system (Candyman, Frankenstein)
- Punishment disguised as order (Hellraiser, The Witch)
- Cycles of harm that can’t be escaped until they’re healed (It Follows, Let the Right One In)
The systems we build reflect the stories we tell. And for too long, our system has told stories that label people as irredeemable, disposable, or monstrous, rather than fully human.
Restorative Justice Interrupts the Horror Cycle
Restorative justice isn’t about ignoring harm. It’s about confronting it with accountability, dialogue, healing, and transformation. Horror teaches us the cost of denial: the more we avoid the monster, the stronger it becomes.
The same is true for injustice.
- What if our system was designed not around punishment, but around reckoning?
- What if we taught kids about conflict resolution and community repair instead of suspensions and handcuffs?
- What if we offered healing instead of horror?
This Halloween, we’re saying: the scariest part isn’t the ghost. It’s pretending we don’t see it.
Join Us: Monsters in the System Month
All month long on Clutch Justice, we’re doing a deep dive into some of my favorite horror films that double as critiques of the justice system. From wrongful convictions to cultural erasure, from generational trauma to carceral violence, I’ll be breaking it down, one scream at a time.
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