“A case was referred to us in which a boy – just fourteen years old – was badly beaten and robbed. The young man who did it was facing three years in prison. I went to speak with the survivor’s mother…she said to me:

When I first found out about this, I wanted that young man to drown to death… And then I realized as a mother that I don’t want either of those things. I want him to drown in a river of fire.

But three years from now, when my nine-year-old son is twelve, he is going to be coming to and from his aunt’s house, to and from school, to and from the corner school alone. And one day he’s going to walk by that young man. And I have to ask myself: when that day comes, do I want that young man to have been upstate or do I want him to have been with y’all? And the truth is.. I’d rather him be with y’all.”

(Sered 2019: 45)

In her book Until We Reckon (2019), Danielle Sered – founder and director of Common Justice, a nonprofit which offers both services for survivors as well as sentencing alternatives for perpetrators of violent crimes (Common Justice 2023) – records a young crime survivor’s mother’s desire for her child’s assailant to undergo a rehabilitative program as opposed to traditional incarceration. Sered writes: “This mother did something I have since seen countless survivors do over and over again: she put aside an individual desire for revenge in the interest of what would secure the safety of her child and children like him.” (Sered 2019:45)

This dialogue raises important questions that probe deep into the heart of “justice” in America. If a prison’s job is to keep society safe, then why did this mother feel less safe with the idea of her son’s assailant in prison? And if incarceration does not fulfil the needs of crime survivors, then what does?

Safety, Accountability and Vindication: Recovering from the Trauma of Crime

In 1992, Judith Lewis Herman presented the world with a radical proposition.

 After graduating from Harvard Medical School, she received a fellowship in community psychiatry, which allowed her to work in a ‘women’s free clinic,’ one of the many counter-institutions, like rape crisis centres and battered women’s shelters, that activists in the women’s movement created during the 1970s (Clark 2023). Her years of experience working with survivors of extreme violence and abuse (Chesler 1992) led her to develop what was, at the time, a revolutionary idea: the idea that the lingering effects of severe trauma could be felt, not only by survivors of war, but also by those of domestic and sexual violence. 

In her 1992 book, Trauma and Recovery, Herman identifies safety -physical, emotional and social – as the first and most crucial part of trauma recovery (Herman 1992: 159) She points out that “because no one can establish a safe environment alone, the task of developing an adequate safety plan always includes a component of social support.” (Herman 1992: 160)

In paper titled Justice from the Victim’s Perspective, Herman asks traumatic crime survivors open-ended questions about their experiences, both with the trauma they endured and with their efforts to seek redress (Herman 2005: 579). She found that holding perpetrators accountable is important to survivors of crime (Herman 2005: 589), as is providing survivors with the validation they deserve. As opposed to narrow ideas of revenge or reconciliation, what trauma survivors wanted was for their families and communities to take a stand in support of them – and in denunciation of the perpetrator. It was more important to them that the perpetrators lost power and honor (as opposed to money or liberty), and it was especially important that their communities recognized the harm that the perpetrator had caused. 

However, Herman is careful to distinguish between the concepts of holding offenders accountable and extracting revenge from them, writing that “despite probing questions specifically designed to encourage free expression of vengeful and vindictive feelings,” (Herman 2005: 590)  relatively few (5 of 21) of the victims she interviewed “clearly stated a wish to make their perpetrators suffer”(Herman 2005: 590). She also adds that, “only one informant endorsed a conventional retributive view of a prison sentence as payment for a crime” (Herman 2005: 589).

Society has embraced the seemingly intuitive idea that imprisoning more people for longer periods of time brings victims “closure” and “justice.” However, a critical examination of America’s criminal justice system reveals tremendously damaging outcomes, not only for survivors and offenders, but for everybody. 

What happens Inside American “Correctional” Facilities:

It’s no secret that American jails and prisons can be veritable hellholes. Basic rights such as nutritious food (Marlow 2017; Soble, Stroud and Weinstein 2020), hygiene products (Law and Nalebuff 2023) and adequate healthcare (Wang 2022) are frequently unavailable, inequitably distributed or outright weaponized. While carceral institutions are physically removed from society, systems of race and gender-based discrimination are institutionalized and magnified;  black people regularly receive harsher disciplinary sanctions than their white counterparts (United States Sentencing Commission 2023), and women experience higher rates of sexual violation (Wolff et al. 2006). 

A person who is incarcerated must therefore learn to navigate an entirely new world: one with its own language, social hierarchies, boundaries for acceptable behaviour and always, inevitably, the pervasive possibilities of violence, neglect and injustice. As incarcerated writer Micheal B. Beverley writes: 

“Indirect affronts to a [prisoner’s] reputation come by association [with other prisoners] and refer back to the prison hierarchy…Those at the top form gangs and those at the bottom become isolated…One result is that prison can worsen an inmate’s mental and moral state through interaction with other inmates. The temptation to adopt criminal thinking is pervasive and compelling. If you want to learn how to be a criminal, go to prison. A shoplifter might learn to become a home invader, a drug user to become a drug dealer, or a man in on simple assault may become more violent, risking a future manslaughter or murder. Though the potential for physical violence of all kinds is very real, it has less of a lasting impact than the threat of violence [resulting from a loss of reputation]…each inmate engages in [a] battle with his own mind”

(Beverley 2013)

Through their interactions with guards and each other, incarcerated people develop ways to view and survive their new environment. A façade of invulnerability, subversions of authority, escapist psychological tendencies and a willingness to commit acts of violence all serve to protect an imprisoned person’s personal and social sense of security within an institution designed to destroy them. Consequently, in the absence of conscious, rehabilitative redirection; criminal behavior and dangerous habits become deeply entrenched, with relatively low-level offenders returning to the outside world as hardened felons, threatening the safety of their communities (Listwan et al. 2013). Because incarceration in its current form victimizes offenders, it serves as a barrier to – as opposed to a vehicle for – personal accountability. In order to recognize and accept their own wrongdoing, a person must be confronted with their actions and made to actively reflect on them. They must be made to take ownership of the choices they made, to recognize the harm resulting from those choices, and to take steps towards repairing the damage they caused. With its present focus on physical and mental brutalization, prisons are filled with people whose ongoing, systemic dehumanization casts them as pseudo-victims in their own right, thereby standing in the way of their ability to take responsibility for their own misdeeds. Coupled with this intrinsic flaw is the prison system’s cookie-cutter approach towards “justice”: within prison, neither the nature of a person’s crime nor their individual life circumstances generally result in a formal difference in punishment. Because recognizing complete responsibility for a crime requires one’s assessing the personal conditions and behavior leading up to the crime, the broadness of prison’s approach does little to facilitate this recognition.

A lack of external behavioral, educational or psychiatric interventions also negatively impacts a person’s chances of accepting and making amends for their crimes 

Despite the ineffectiveness of the prison system, both external studies (Tagney 2011) and internal testimonies indicate that many incarcerated people feel intense guilt and shame about their crimes. However, the dearth of voluntary service opportunities within prison serves as an active deterrent to any demonstration of remorse or attempt to make amends. Formerly incarcerated writer Kenneth Hartman says:

 “Why aren’t prisoners, on a voluntary basis, building houses for the homeless, recording books for the blind, teaching poor kids to read or helping care for the impoverished elderly? Why, in these times of growing social need, are the talents and desires of a huge number of people to make amends not being used? I killed a man for no good reason, drunk and high on drugs, and I carry a heavy load of remorse, guilt and pain. I cannot bring back Thomas Allen Fellowes, but perhaps I can bring some degree of meaning to his life if I am allowed to contribute back.”

(Hartman 1995)

In addition to actively hindering both community safety and offender accountability, the “criminal justice” system refuses to validate the direct harm suffered by victims. The system assumes that placing an offender behind bars is enough to repudiate the devastating physical, emotional and financial damage crime survivors live through– an assumption whose inadequacy only adds to a survivor’s pain.

 Victim compensation programs – which would actually provide a practical means of support for crime survivors – are often woefully underfunded with many states capping payouts or denying victims money altogether (Associated Press 2023). One report estimates that 96% of victims of violent crime did not receive compensation (Alliance for Safety and Justice 2022). Compensation is disproportionately denied to victims of color, with one mother saying

“There’s always an assumption when a young man is killed in the city of Detroit…It was almost like I was being criminalized because my son was murdered”

(Alliance for Safety and Justice 2022).

Victims who do not receive compensation must cover their own medical and therapeutic treatments, in addition to shouldering the costs of lost wages, crime scene cleanup, emergency housing and other necessities – all while attempting to heal from the trauma of crime.  

[Image Caption: With a justice system that prioritizes punishing people over protecting communities, it is unsurprising that almost a quarter of crime survivors choose not to report their crimes (Image source: Alliance for Safety and Justice 2022)]

Meanwhile, America spends $80 billion (Wagner and Raubey 2017) annually to operate prisons and jails, with that number rising as more and more people are incarcerated. It’s clear that our current system isn’t working –  and it’s important that we consider the wellbeing of everyone it affects.

Saving Time, Money and Lives: What Real Solutions Could Look Like

There is no way to evade the fact that some people are simply too dangerous to ever be allowed back into the outside world. For those whose crimes are severe enough to preclude them from being in society, it is important that community safety alone is the reason for this preclusion. Total exclusion from the outside world is not a “price” to be paid for any crime, but a measure of containment when there is truly no other alternative. In order to determine which people pose a consistent threat to others’ safety, Herman said the victims she spoke to described several realistic factors: “Multiple offenses, a repetitive or compulsive pattern of behaviour,  a  well-established  modus  operandi, and gratuitous sadism were the reasons most frequently cited [as justifications for containment]” (Herman 2005: 596)

Most people in prison, however, are not irredeemable. American prisons’ current approaches to public safety and offender accountability are deeply lacking, but their shortcomings can be overcome by treating prisoners like what they are: people. Providing rigorous counselling and reintegrative shaming, instituting psychological interventions, creating opportunities to demonstrate remorse and changed behaviour, and starting programs to combat substance abuse and poverty would help create ex-prisoners who are capable of navigating the world while making better decisions for themselves and their communities. While the costs of these measures per prisoner would be greater than what the US currently spends, their impact in terms of falling recidivism rates and declining crime would save millions of dollars in the long run (Benko 2015). 

This money can and should be used to fund practical services and psychosocial support for crime survivors. Violence affects communities – and solutions to it must ideally be rooted in communities as well. It is important that (whenever possible) survivors’ communities take a collective stand in support of the survivor and in reproval of the offender. This support may be externally mediated, such as a social worker’s helping identify friends and family members to ensure a survivor’s sense of safety, or calling upon members of the offender’s network to ensure that the offender respects the civil restraints and limitations placed upon them for the victim’s safety (Herman 2005: 597). Ultimately, the survivor’s safety and healing should be the focus of any interventions, and their wellbeing should consistently remain a top priority.

Footnotes: 

Sources Cited: 

7. Hartman, Kenneth. 1995. “Still Pursuing the Punishment Fallacy” American Prison Writing Archive. Retrieved May 2, 2024 (https://prisonwitness.org/apwa-essay/still-pursuing-the-punishment-fallacy/)

8. Herman, Judith Lewis. 1992. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror New York, New York: Basic Books.
9. Herman, Judith Lewis. 2005. “Justice from the Victim’s Perspective” Violence Against Women 11(5): 563-730
10. Larson, Doran. 2013. Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press. 
11. Law, Victoria & Nalebuff, Rachel Kauder. 2023. “Prisons Use Menstruation as a Form of Punishment” TIME. Retrieved May 2, 2024. (https://time.com/6265653/prison-menstruation-punishment/)
12. Listwan, S. J., Sullivan, C. J., Agnew, R., Cullen, F. T., & Colvin, M. 2013. “The Pains of Imprisonment Revisited: The Impact of Strain on Inmate Recidivism” Justice Quarterly, 30(1), 144–168. 
13. Marlow, Mariel; Luna-Gierke, Ruth; Griffin, Patricia . 2017. “Foodborne Disease Outbreaks in Correctional Institutions—United States, 1998–2014”. American Journal of Public Health 107(7)- 1150-1156
14. Sered, Danielle. 2019. Until We Reckon : Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair. New York : The New Press. 
15. Tangney, June Price; Stuewig, Jeff; Hafez, Logaina. 2011. “Shame, Guilt and Remorse: Implications for Offender Populations” The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology. 22(5): 706–723.
16. United States Sentencing Commission 2023. “Demographic Differences in Federal Sentencing” Washington, D.C: United States Sentencing Commission. Retrieved May 2, 2024 (https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2023/20231114_Demographic-Differences.pdf)
17. Wagner, Peter and Rabuy, Bernadette. 2017. “Following the Money of Mass Incarceration” Prison Policy Initiative. Retrieved May 2, 2024 (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/money.html)
18. Wang, Leah. 2022. “Chronic Punishment: The Unmet Health Needs of People in State Prisons” Prison Policy Initiative. Retrieved May 2, 2024 (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/chronicpunishment.html)
19. Wolff N, Blitz CL, Shi J, Bachman R, Siegel JA. 2006. “Sexual violence inside prisons: Rates of victimization.” Journal of Urban Health. 83(5):835-48.

References:

1. Alexander, Michelle. 2019. “Reckoning with Violence” The New York Times. Retrieved May 7, 2024. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/03/opinion/violence-criminal-justice.html)
2. Larson, Doran. 2013. “Why Scandinavian Prisons are Superior” The Atlantic. Retrieved May 7, 2024 (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why-scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/)