A crime victim, this Fresno woman has reclaimed her life, and is ready to help others
“Why didn’t you tell someone sooner?” Survivors of child sexual abuse and family violence hear this question all too often.
“Why didn’t you tell someone sooner?” Survivors of child sexual abuse and family violence hear this question all too often.
With the House vote Friday, the Florida Legislature has passed its most expansive justice reform bill in 20 years, an initiative led by the state’s crime surivors, many of whom rallied in Tallahassee this session to call for change.
A new, and sobering, report released last month reveals that four in 10 Texans have been a victim of crime in the past 10 years, with many experiencing trauma, stress, anxiety and fear as a result. The report from the Alliance for Safety and Justice further shows that seven in 10 violent crime victims have been victims more than once, and that nine in 10 Texas crime victims do not receive support from the state’s victim compensation program that could help them recover.
As a survivor of the 1992 murder of my two daughters, mother, sister, niece and nephew, I have spent much time thinking about what could have prevented the murders of my family over the past 27 years. While the man who did this was convicted and ultimately executed, I am committed to helping prevent these kinds of tragedies by ensuring the use of proactive safety solutions.
If Gov. Ron DeSantis signs Florida’s criminal justice reform bill into law soon, it will mean the voices of citizens like Darla and Elliott Saunders are starting to matter more than the voices of politicians like Mike Hill. Hill was the lone dissenting voice in the state House against a bill aimed at reducing recidivism and pulling back some of the harsher penalties against low-level, nonviolent crimes. He criticized the bill’s bundling and feared it would send a message Florida is getting too soft on crime.
The first time Matthew Roberts was shot, a single bullet grazed the top of his shoulder. He remembers it as a warm day in 2015; he’d gone to see his girlfriend fight someone on the street in Cleveland, where he lives.
It’s been almost four years since I was shot in the stomach at a New Orleans parade on Mother’s Day. When two young men shot into the crowd, 18 others were also injured. I am a local journalist and was covering the parade for a New Orleans paper. The bullet landed in my stomach and …
Continue reading “Don’t Jail Crime Victims for Not Testifying”
00That May weekend four years ago started like most: I hoped to see my son but needed to go to work. In fact, it was the Saturday before Mother’s Day, and he’d already called to say that he was driving down to see me for the occasion—he had something special for me, he said. His …
Continue reading “The Marshall Project: My Son Was Murdered on Mother’s Day”
At the age of 10, I senselessly lost my best friend to gun violence. Even as an elementary school student, Reubin Elder represented something bigger to us. Reubin was a popular and straight-A student who tragically died in a random drive-by shooting in our Highland Park neighborhood. So much of our conversations around gun violence …
Continue reading “Detroit News: Focus on rehabilitation in prison”
Since the 1970s, egregious drug laws and mandatory minimums initiated in the United States in an effort known as the War on Drugs have devastated low-income neighborhoods, primarily black and brown communities. Policies that led to over-policing in underserved communities, the militarization of the police, mass incarceration, and the social stigma about black drug users …