RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

A key issue for CAASE

Our current systems do very little to hold perpetrators of sexual violence accountable for the harm they’ve caused. In Chicago, only 10 to 20 percent of reports of sexual assault actually led to arrests in the last decade. Police, incarceration, and current legal practices can cause further damage and pain for survivors and their communities.1 Police intervention must improve, but it cannot be our only response: it’s time to shift funds and build alternatives to the criminal legal system. At CAASE, we believe this includes restorative and transformative justice programs, rape crisis centers, community-based mental health services, civil legal remedies, free legal services, accommodations from schools and workplaces, and more.

Providing Better Options for Survivors

We have to start by acknowledging that sexual violence is a crisis in Chicago and account for how our current leaders, systems, and practices have failed survivors. We must commit to providing the best options for survivors of sexual harm while working to prevent it. That has to include ensuring they can pursue healing and restoration in more ways than one. CAASE supports policies that promote options for survivors and urges the City of Chicago to allocate funds to support systems, restorative justice programs, community-based resources, and more. 

• Creating more pathways for survivors to seek justice outside the criminal legal system and inviting perpetrators to take accountability for their actions can provide a vital avenue for healing. CAASE supports efforts to encourage the availability of restorative justice practices and incentivize perpetrator participation in the process.2
• CAASE also backs efforts to increase funding for gender-based violence services outside policing—to ensure survivors can get support wherever they need and feel comfortable doing so, including and not including the criminal system.3
• Restorative options for survivors include sharing circles, victim-offender dialogue, victim impact panels, community reparation boards, circles of support, sentencing circles, conferencing with juveniles and adults, and restorative discipline in educational settings. Whereas judicial processes and incarceration primarily aim for deterrence and punishment of the offender, restorative justice can be both responsive to survivor needs for validation, empowerment, and repair of harm and preventative of future sexual assault.4

Reimagining Rehabilitation and Accountability

Current criminal punishments and systems do not adequately aid hurt communities and individuals. It’s foolish to keep investing in systems that let law enforcement and legislators off the hook for actually changing rape culture. Instead of clinging to a false sense of safety that impedes progress and inflicts inhumane punishment, we should be focusing on proven strategies. To support survivors of sexual harm and prevent future pain, CAASE is dedicated to uplifting strategies that rehabilitate people who cause harm while holding them accountable 

• Sex offender registries fail to improve public safety. They do not provide restoration, rehabilitation, or prevention—yet they remain popular and keep growing. Registries pile on crushing punishments that hinder people with sex offense convictions from safely and successfully integrating into society. They also require costly program maintenance, diverting critical resources away from survivors and prevention strategies. Furthermore, registries cannot be effective at stopping future violence because most survivors of sexual assault and abuse never report their experiences to the police in the first place, let alone see their assailants face any penalty. It’s also important to remember that the few who have been convicted of sex crimes are less likely to reoffend than other criminals.5
• There is a credible argument that sexual assault service providers, advocates, and policymakers can take leadership in the development of restorative options both in parallel with and independent from the conventional criminal legal system. Meeting survivors’/victims’ justice needs and fostering accountability is preventative in itself and bolsters the primary prevention messages that are central elements of rape prevention education programs. Innovation from both inside and outside the criminal legal system would benefit all parties.6
• Decades of data demonstrate that conventional justice has done little to respond to sexual assault reports. Some of the notable evidence of resistance to change in this system includes the lack of a positive trend despite dedicated activism and education/training aimed at increasing reporting or conviction rates in sexual assaults.7

Understanding the Impacts of Incarceration

Supporting survivors means pushing the criminal legal system to be fair and restorative. CAASE understands the links between sexual harm and incarceration and supports policies and practices that uplift survivors. 

• Nationally, 70 to 90% of incarcerated women have been abused physically, sexually, or emotionally. Experts say this frequently leads to their imprisonment because survivors’ trauma reactions and survival strategies are criminalized. It’s one of many ways the criminal legal system fails survivors. It also fails society when it’s overly punitive, unfocused on rehabilitation, and frequently incarcerates people for crimes of poverty.8

• CAASE supports moving toward a system that would step us closer to recognizing the humanity of defendants—who are disproportionately poor people of color—and the repercussions incarceration will have on their families. It’s why CAASE was a leading supporter of the Pretrial Fairness Act, a law that ends the use of money bail in Illinois in making decisions about whether a person should be held in jail before trial.

For more information, contact Madeleine Behr, Policy Director, Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, at 773.244.2230 ext. 212 or mbehr@caase.org.

References

1. Too Little Too Late? The CPD’s Response to Sex Crimes 2010–2019. Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Hawkbaker, KT. “CPD is Failing Survivors—Here’s What We Should Do.” Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, 8 Oct. 2020.
4. Koss, Mary P., and Mary Achilles. “Restorative Justice Responses to Sexual Assault.” VAWnet, Feb. 2008.
5. Forrestal, Hayley. “The Sex Offender Registry Doesn’t Work.” Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, 9 Oct. 2019.
6. Koss and Achilles. 
7. Ibid.
8. Forrestal, Hayley. “Incarceration Impacts Families, Including Survivors.” Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, 9 Apr. 2019.

Issues in Action

Our commitment to these issues is animated through our work, especially in advocacy for systemic solutions that prevent future sexual violence by breaking down the layers of oppression that increase the likelihood of victimization. The current policies we are working on can be found on our Legislative Priorities page. You can also learn about or Public Policy and Advocacy work through our blog posts on the topic.