Street Roots • May 19-25, 2017
Commentary
Page 11
Victims: Prioritize prevention, treatment, not more incarceration
BY TALIA GAD
C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T
rime survivors have a seat at the public
safety table, but to ensure that criminal
justice policy solutions reflect victims’
needs, advocates should always seek more
to elevate those voices. So at this public safety
crossroads, while Oregon
lawmakers debate
whether to open a second
prison for women, it’s
fortuitous that a first-of-
its-kind study has
emerged to shed light on
survivors’ perspectives
on criminal justice
policies.
The National Survey on Victims’ Views
confirms that there’s no unified victims’ voice
and that people impacted by crime are as
diverse a group as any. The survey does reveal
some general preferences among survivors,
though. In the broad-reaching paper, findings
include identifying the groups that are most
vulnerable to crime, assessing how incidents
impact victims, asking whether the criminal
justice system is meeting survivors’ needs, and
inquiring about victims’ perspectives of the
criminal justice system and public safety
policies.
This last set of responses is one that merits
Oregon’s attention right now, and there we find
that “the overwhelming majority of crime
victims believe that the criminal justice system
relies too heavily on incarceration, and strongly
prefer investments in prevention and treatment
to more spending on prisons and jails.” This
preference is true for survivors across the
demographic board: for women and men; white,
black and Latino people; rural, suburban and
urban residents; and Democrats, Republicans
and Independents. A majority or plurality in
each group of survivors wants policies that rely
less on incarceration and more on solutions.
Victims views are also consistent between
survivors of different types of crime. When
asked whether there should be more focus on
punishing people who commit crimes or on
C
<z>
SAFETY and
JUSTICE
Talia Gad is the
communications
director for
Partnership for
Safety and Justice,
a Portland
nonprofit that
advances solutions
to crime that
ensure justice,
equity,
accountability, and
healing to achieve
safe and strong
communities.
rehabilitating people who commit crimes, the
data aligns: 61 percent of property crime victims
and 60 percent of violent crime survivors prefer
rehabilitation.
This finding should not be surprising. While
responses to crime vary among people and
ways
evolve over time, one thing is overwhelmingly
consistent: survivors of crime want to ensure
that the person who harmed them doesn’t do it
again and doesn’t harm anyone else.
One Oregonian’s personal story is a case in
point. A woman and her sister were struck at 70
mph by driver who’d been drinking too much
and chose to drive. The crash paralyzed the
woman, and she’s since lived with a significant
spinal cord injury; her sister sustained mild
traumatic brain injury. Between her wheelchair
costs, medical supplies, and other expenses
resulting from the accident, she knew what
accountability meant for her: the driver should
receive addiction treatment to lower the risk
that he’d harm others in the future, and she felt
that he should be mandated to work and
generate income that could pay restitution
toward some of her costs incurred from the
crash. In line with the overall preference of
survivors in the National Survey on Victims’
Views, she wanted for the person who harmed
her to receive addiction treatment, not a long-
prison sentence.
It’s important to reiterate that the findings
aren’t homogeneous. Some survivors do want a
prison sentence, but by a margin of 3 to 1,
“victims prefer holding people accountable
through options beyond prison, such as
rehabilitation, mental health treatment, drug
treatment, community supervision or
community service.”
Among those who participated in the survey,
survivors prefer:
■ Shorter sentences with treatment as
opposed to longer sentences (61 percent)
■ Increased investments in drug treatment
rather than longer sentences and more prisons
(80 percent)
■ More mental health services rather than
longer sentences and more prisons (88 percent)
Coincidentally, or perhaps as a result of
research and evidence-based approaches to
public safety, Oregon legislators are now
considering a bill that exactly reflects these
preferences. The Safety and Savings Act (HB
3078) proposes
■ Shorter sentences with treatment as
opposed to longer sentences
■ Increased investments in drug treatment
rather than longer sentences and more prisons
■ More mental health services rather than
longer sentences and more prisons
The Safety and Savings Act is perhaps
reflective of this report’s findings because its
legislative champions have firsthand experience
working with crime victims, people who’ve
caused harm and the families of both. Leading
HB 3078 are Reps. Carla Piluso (a former police
chief), Tawna Sanchez (a volunteer who works
with women in prison) and Ann Lininger (a
public defender). And support broadens from
there.
Business leaders, women’s victim/survivor
advocates, union groups, faith leaders, children’s
advocacy groups, civil rights organizations and
addiction treatment associations are all working
on behalf of this bill because they share the
same priority: to achieve the greatest public
safety impact by holding people accountable for
crime while also interrupting the cycles that
sometimes include harming others.
Oregon is at a critical juncture. We can open
a second prison for yet more women who are
primarily serving longer sentences for addiction-
driven drug and property crimes. Or we can
continue progress that began in 2013 with
reforms that achieve accountability yet reduce
incarceration by reinvesting in local services for
solutions-based responses to crime. At this
juncture, it’s valuable to know what the majority
of survivors want.
And as for the woman who survived the
crash, she went on to start an advocacy
organization to promote criminal justice policies
centered on crime victims’ needs. Her little
shop grew in size and stature, merged with
another organization and became Partnership
for Safety and Justice.
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