Expanding a Community’s Justice Response to Sex Crimes Through Advocacy, Prosecutorial, and Public Health Collaboration

Abstract

Problems in criminal justice system response to date-acquaintance rape and nonpenetration sexual offenses include (a) they are markers of a sexual offending career, yet are viewed as minor; (b) perpetrators are not held accountable in ways that reduce reoffense; and (c) criminal justice response disappoints and traumatizes victims. To address these problems, a collaboration of victim services, prosecutors, legal scholars, and public health professionals are implementing and evaluating RESTORE, a victim-driven, community-based restorative justice program for selected sex crimes. RESTORE prepares survivors, responsible persons (offenders), and both parties' families and friends for face-to-face dialogue to identify the harm and develop a redress plan. The program then monitors the offender's compliance for 12 months. The article summarizes empirical data on problems in criminal justice response, defines restorative justice models, and examines outcome. Then the RESTORE program processes and goals are described. The article highlights community collaboration in building and sustaining this program.

Restorative Justice and Sexual Assault: Outcome Appraisal Through Textual Analysis

“…The expression of apology and forgiveness are desired outcomes in sexual assault [82,88], envisioned in program design as possible with self-reflection, while responsible persons complete reparative activities, receive therapy and regularly meet with staff and board members, and for survivor victims after psychotherapy and a reasonable passage of time [48,49,89,90]. To determine what generates successful program outcomes, all the core elements require scrutiny, especially the designated procedures most effective for facilitated conferencing between participants [28, 38 45, 91] and professionally responsive interactions, while working with survivor victims [38,48,49,56,[79][80][81][82][83][84] and responsible persons [33,67,81,90].…”

“…Collection of evaluation data was aimed at participant satisfaction, adherence to program requirements, and the reasons for choosing "to opt-in," and monitoring data to examine fidelity to the core elements of the adapted RJ model (analysis in progress). For a review of program objectives, see [48]; for its theoretical foundations, see [28,49]; for an earlier review of the program, see [50, pp. 305-306].…”

The Efficacy of Victim Services Programs

“…These findings leave many researchers and practitioners alike to question whether increasingly scarce resources should be funneled into an alternative approach to treating victims (e.g., one that truly empowers victims as they come face to face with the perpetrator). For one thing, and as noted by Koss et al (2004), "victims are more likely to be kept informed about their cases . .…”

“…In a sample of 251 cases drawn from court records and from a Department of Corrections's list of violent crime victims, the authors found that less than one third reported receiving psychological treatment. Koss, Bachar, Hopkins, and Carlson (2004) note that for rape victims, preparing for and then going to trial can be extremely stressful. They point out that although efforts aimed at involving rape victims more in the trial process are commendable, the negative backlash consists of "increased nightmares, decreased social activities, more dissatisfaction with heterosexual relationships, loss of appetite, recurrence of phobias, and greater psychological distress" (p. 1442).…”

“…These authors provide evidence from a comprehensive review of studies measuring the impact of restorative justice programs that victim-offender mediation programs can do more to alleviate the psychological impact of victimization than can the more traditional approach to providing services to crime victims. They also point to a 1984 British crime survey indicating that about 50% of crime victims said they would be interested in participating in a meeting with the perpetrator (Koss et al, 2004).…”