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.
“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.
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 …
Increasingly, victims of crime and their surviving family members are speaking out for reconciliation, rather than retribution, in the debate over criminal justice reform. In April, about 500 people gathered at the Convention Center in downtown Sacramento, California for the annual Survivors Speak Conference. The conference, organized by Californians for Safety and Justice (CSJ), a …
Agnes Furey, who works with survivors of violent crime, knows what it’s like to get the proverbial telephone call. She got hers in 1998, when authorities delivered the news that her 40-year-old daughter and 6-year-old grandson were killed in their Sarasota apartment. “I can’t change what happened,” said Furey, 80, who lives in Tallahassee. “What …
Continue reading “National advocacy program for crime survivors comes to Orlando”
Her father, uncle, a cousin and two older brothers. Those are some of the family members 16-year-old Aaliyah Smith has lost to gun violence. Then there are her friends.
