Stop speaking for victims: “As someone who has survived violence including rape & lost people I love to murder, I join other survivors in an urgent call to abandon “tough on crime” rhetoric & embrace solutions proven to keep us safe in ways prison cannot.” washingtonpost.com/opinions/priso…
The brilliant @daniellesered, pioneer of restorative justice, responds to this sensationalist, fearmonger of an Editorial by the @washingtonpost, which asks “what about the victims?”
“Survivors want safety, but many survivors do not believe prison will deliver that safety.”
“Survivors want safety, but many survivors do not believe prison will deliver that safety.”
“As the US begins to correct the long-standing damages of mass incarceration, resistance is expressed in the name of victims. But this pushback is not reflective of what most victims want. Crime survivors have perhaps paid the greatest price for failures of mass incarceration.”
“At Common Justice, an alternative-to-incarceration program for serious violent felonies, a full 90 percent of survivors given the choice between seeing the people who hurt them incarcerated or held accountable differently choose our program.” commonjustice.org
“The evidence is on these survivors’ side. New York has reduced violent crime by more than half over the past 30 years and has reduced incarceration by more than half. **Less prison and more safety can and do go hand in hand.**”
Wrote about “the anatomy of sensationalism” last week in reference to this editorial. It bore all the hallmarks. But at base: Helps perpetuate a costly, wasteful, devastating, ineffective system at the expense of predominately Black & Latino communities.
For more wisdom on the topic of violence & appropriate responses to it through a restorative lens, focusing on true accountability & healing the trauma of survivors, I really cannot recommend Daniele Sered's book, "Until We Reckon," highly enough. amazon.com/Until-We-Recko…
