Parallel Justice: Supporting Survivors of Crime
Article by Arwen Bird
No matter which way you approach the criminal justice debate, most of us agree that our current system falls short of meeting the needs of survivors of crime and violence. The mainstream “victims” movement has pushed for years to be heard, at times calling for harsh sentences and more punishment. Their calls to provide services to victims have become secondary to seeking vengeance. Parallel Justice, a concept launched by Susan Herman while she worked as Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, provides a promising way of responding to survivors of crime, where our needs are the primary focus.
Parallel Justice is the idea that survivors of crime deserve a system whose primary focus is meeting our real world needs. Survivors would be able to seek and get the services they need, completely separate from the prosecution and sentencing of another person. In fact, under such a system it wouldn’t matter if you had reported the crime to police — you would still be able to access the help you needed to get your life back together after victimization.
The Current System Does Not Focus on Survivors
Under the current system, almost everything provided to survivors in the criminal justice system is tied to the prosecution and sentencing of a person (or people) accused of hurting them. Victims’ assistance offices are located within, staffed and funded through the prosecutors’ office. Victims’ advocates are the primary contact for survivors of crime and the majority of their work happens during the prosecutions’ effort to convict and sentence an accused person(s). Once someone is convicted and serving a sentence, there is virtually no office responsible to provide advocates or services to survivors in need.
Now consider that a majority of crimes (at least 51% in 2003) go un-reported to police. People choose not to report for a number of reasons, and locating victims’ assistance offices inside prosecutors’ offices – where most survivors aren’t going – means that the majority of survivors are not served by our current system.
What Do Survivors/Victims Need?
Following a serious crime, survivors may be facing unexpected medical bills, counseling bills, or other expenses connected to rebuilding their lives. In most states, survivors can seek remittance for losses or injuries that happened as a result of the crime. This is usually handled through an office of Crime Victims Compensation and is based on ‘economic losses’ — meaning that you have to produce receipts for counseling, funerals, etc. in order to be compensated. But many survivors are not aware that they could be compensated for their loss and do not apply. Other survivors do not apply because they aren’t able to present their loss in a way that the system understands. Such is the case of a rape survivor who struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and addiction years after a sexual assault. Both of these conditions can be directly linked to surviving violence, but neither is easy to quantify and thus it is difficult for her/him to seek and get compensation for her/his injuries.
A system of Parallel Justice would operate separate from the conviction system. It wouldn’t matter how long it had been since the victimization had occurred. For many survivors emotional trauma does not manifest immediately or there may be new phases or issues that come up in their healing process, years or decades after the crime. Regardless of time, a parallel system would be able to engage and help survivors at any stage to get the services or counseling they need. It is driven solely by the needs of a survivor, rather than by the states need to prosecute crimes.
Parallel Justice is Based in the Community
Under a Parallel Justice system the services and resources that survivors needed would be physically located closer to where people live, making them easier to access, and would be culturally appropriate. Crime Survivors for Community Safety (CSCS) is particularly interested in a ‘one-stop’ center that survivors of violence and crime can enter, and be immediately referred to an advocate for help with employment, housing, counseling—whatever particular barrier that survivor was experiencing because of their victimization. Advocates under such a system would reflect the communities affected by violence and be able to refer survivors to services based in their culture. One example of this could be helping a survivor who has become disabled because of a crime find accessible housing, and linking them to other survivors with a similar disability.
Supporting survivors is something that many of us want to do, and with help, many of us can do. Community-based services are not a replacement for people helping one another, but instead creating a community in which helping each other is the norm. That is a community making movements towards justice.
Is Parallel Justice Possible in the Near Future?
A glimmer of the idea of Parallel Justice is already working, though in pieces and not part of a holistic and integrated system (please see side-bar by Terrie Quinteros on domestic violence programs). A shift to make Parallel Justice and “survivor centered” services widely available will take time and commitment from people who care about helping survivors recover from violence. But it is exactly the goal of helping people that should propel our efforts — it is obvious that the current system addresses only a fraction of people who have been victimized, and is not meeting many of their deepest needs. The primary reason for this shortcoming is that helping people is not the focus of our criminal justice system; instead law-enforcement is the focus. That needs to change. We have the resources needed to support a system like Parallel Justice, but first we have to make a real commitment to helping and healing for survivors. The time for that has come.
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of Justice Matters.
