Originally posted by the Fortune Society’s David Rothberg Center for Public Policy, Moving Beyond Sides: The Power and Potential of a New Public Safety Paradigm examines how individuals and organizations on both sides of the criminal justice reform debate can work together to create a stronger, more intelligent way to keep communities safer, while respecting the wishes of victims.
The authors of the paper, David Rogers and Kerry Naughton, relate how the “tough on crime” policies of the past few decades have not lived up to the expectation of legislators who, spurred on by victim advocates, believed harsh laws would decrease crime and promote public safety. Rogers and Naughton argue that those who are most likely to be a victim of crime, people living in low-income neighborhoods, women, and people of color, are not often given a chance to voice their perspectives, but that white, middle-class males jump into the spotlight to give their own views as to what needs to be done to combat crime and aid victims; views that are likely to be at odds with the victims’ wishes.
The paper offers well thought-out recommendations of how victim advocates, and those opposing mass incarceration, can work together to insure victims’ voices are heard in deciding what are the best practices. Rogers and Naughton offer a guide to finding a common ground between both sides that will focus on “...dismantling a system with an exaggerated emphasis on short-sighted, destructive, and overly punitive public safety policy.”
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