From Retribution to ‘Healing’: Changing How We Help Crime Survivors

Philadelphia women mark National Day of Remembrance for Homicide Victims. Sept 2021. Photo courtesy Mothers in Charge.

Violence is contagious. Those who are victims of crime are more likely to commit it.

So as we mark National Crime Victims’ Rights Week (April 24-30) at a time of rising crime rates, it’s an opportunity to rethink how we support survivors of crime.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Crime Victims has designated this year’s theme as “rights, access, equity, for all victims” to “highlight the importance of helping crime survivors find justice by enforcing victims’ rights, expanding access to services and ensuring equity and inclusion for all.”

To do this, we must dramatically shift the dominant “victims’ rights” framework that emphasizes the victim’s role in legal procedures and retributive punishment—a  framework that is failing too many survivors of crime, and particularly African-American survivors.

Black people, particularly poor ones, in the United States bear the brunt of violent crime at rates far greater than their presence in the nation’s population. This is a consequence of generations of federal, state, and local laws and policies, as well as racially discriminatory private practices, that created the segregated and impoverished neighborhoods most impacted by crime.

Our legal system doesn’t address these past and future harms. Instead, it focuses on retribution—emphasizing the prosecution and maximum punishment of the perpetrator.

Think about it this way: a poor Black woman who is a victim of rape may see her most pressing priority as needing the support and resources to find a safe place to live, rather than the sentencing of her attacker.

In a 1986 victims’ rights newsletter, veteran advocate Aurelia Sands and social worker Janice A. Coye reflected on this: “Around this country, many black families continue to suffer because society has managed to keep them outside the mainstream of its economic, social, and political development.

“Every day is painful” they continued. “And there is no agency offering balm for this deep pain. When another violation is added to this, why turn to the system that offered nothing before?”

Black-led survivors’ organizations provide an alternative blueprint for safety and justice.

Philadelphia’s CHARLES Foundation is one of several Black-led groups of crime survivors and their families lobbying for a different approach to victims’ rights. Photo courtesy CHARLES Foundation.

For more than a century, these organizations have modeled community-based counseling, grieving, memorializing, providing essential services, and protecting people from violence. Their work addresses the social conditions that give rise to crime in disadvantaged communities.

They have learned to rely on themselves rather than police forces. They displace harm with community healing. Neighbors share information on violence and mobilize against it. Organizers advocate for financial and legal assistance for survivors, as well as health and social services programs to help people recover from crime.

These service-based resources are essential to stabilizing individuals, families, and communities in the aftermath of crime, particularly violent loss.

They aim to break the cycle of harm by meeting essential needs and mitigating the impact of trauma that is well-known to elevate the risk of violence. Importantly, they prioritize survivors’ well-being over retribution against people who cause harm. In fact, many Black-led survivors’ organizations recognize that, often, those who cause harm are survivors themselves and extend their aid to those on trial or in prison.

At the heart of their work is the insistence on affirming the humanity of Black survivors of crime.

For example, the CHARLES Foundation, founded by Movita Johnson-Harrell in memory of her murdered son, provides post-trauma emotional support and financial assistance with burials.

Mothers in Charge, another Philadelphia-based organization, is led by women who have lost loved ones to violence. It focuses on violence prevention and providing grief support for women.

Both organizations work to change the conditions in their communities—poverty, untreated mental health issues, and devaluing Black lives—that give rise to violence.

Black-led survivors’ organizations have shown us what is possible. By following their lead, we can build community-based centers that provide trauma-informed counseling and support for survivors of crime, provide funds to stabilize survivors’ housing and assist with relocation, and pay for groceries, safe transportation, and other essentials for dignified living.

We can create public spaces, such as gardens or parks, to encourage healthy community interactions or memorialize those lost to violence.

Miriam Gohara

And, we can have respectful law enforcement officers working in harmony with people who seek police protection.

We can have anti-violence programs and reentry assistance for incarcerated people and others who have caused harm to facilitate their safe return to their communities. We can make support and counseling available to people who experience family-based crimes and would like to find help outside of the criminal legal system.

We can have school programs to bring children who have experienced violence not only trauma informed counseling, but joy, and to remind them of their value.

These social investments, which Black survivors’ organizations model every day, are the antidotes to violence.

Together, they offer the roadmap to achieving “rights, access, equity, for all victims “and for suppressing the contagion of violence.

Miriam Gohara is a Clinical Associate Professor of Law and member of The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law.