At least 95 percent of people behind bars will be released. Some say a formerly incarcerated person’s successful re-entry into society requires more focus on rebuilding an individual and less on punishment. Criminal justice reform efforts also address a victim-centered approach, but some believe that fundamental change might require addressing past trauma of victims as well as the perpetrators of crimes.
America’s prison system incarcerates millions of people, but at least 95 percent of all state prisoners are released after they serve their sentence. Some struggle to navigate that transition successfully.
On this Us & Them episode, host Trey Kay hears about the challenges of re-entry.
How do we want men and women coming back after prison? How do victim advocates feel about programs designed to help formerly incarcerated people succeed on the outside?
Some suggest an important starting point is to recognize that many of the men and women serving time are victims themselves. Recognizing that trauma may be a powerful step to help people make a new life after they serve their time.
This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council, the CRC Foundation, the Daywood Foundation and The Just Trust.
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After 10 years in a Connecticut prison, Daryl McGraw is now a criminal justice reform expert. He has experience in the areas of policy development, contract management and project coordination, as well as collaborating with grassroots peer-advocacy agencies and the Connecticut Department of Corrections. Mr. McGraw is a community organizer, activist and philanthropist. He serves on several boards involving re-entry and criminal justice reform in the state of Connecticut. He consults with law enforcement, universities, policy makers, behavioral health and addiction treatment facilities who are looking to expand their knowledge and expertise in the area of criminal justice reform. McGraw says he re-entered society with a plan for who he wanted to be. He then went on to found Formerly Inc. He says he’s been able to implement some reentry ideas to help other formerly incarcerated people reintegrate. Credit: C4 InnovationsMichelle Thompson is Director of Outreach at the Bible Center Church in Charleston, WV. She is participating in a re-entry simulation staged at the West Virginia State Capitol during the 2023 state legislative session. She says that in her job she helps people with all kinds of challenges like getting rental assistance, transportation, and assistance in paying bills. However, this is her first experience in understanding what a formerly incarcerated person experiences when re-entering society. Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public BroadcastingRahim Buford says he was “caged for 26 years of my life, from age 18 to 44, seven different prisons throughout the state of Tennessee.” He says that people of all ages, faiths, races experience challenges when they re-enter society, and that’s why he started his nonprofit Unheard Voices Outreach. CourtesyThomas Murphy or “Tom Tom” was incarcerated for 31 years. His story of re-entry has been quite challenging. CourtesyJeremiah Nelson is with the West Virginia Re-entry Council and the REACH Initiative. REACH stands for “Restore, Empower, Attain Connections with Hope.” They organized the re-entry simulation staged at the West Virginia State Capitol during the 2023 state legislative session. Jeremiah was formerly incarcerated and says for some re-entering society after incarceration, the most important things can be the most basic. Birth certificates, social security cards, IDs and transportation make the difference between surviving in the outside world and landing back inside. In prison, he says a person only makes about a hundred decisions a day. You’re told when and where to do everything. On the outside, life can mean 30,000 decisions a day. Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public BroadcastingVerna Wyatt and Valerie Craig are victims advocates and co-founders of Tennessee Voices for Victims. Wyatt started this work after her sister-in-law, who had been her best friend for 15 years, was raped and murdered. She said her whole world was turned upside down. “I was so angry at people that could do such horrible, despicable things to innocent people that I wanted to prevent that from happening to other people.” Courtesy
A bill expanding who is allowed to participate in the state’s juvenile restorative justice program passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday — but not without an amendment, scaling back that eligibility.
In restorative justice programs, participants who have committed a crime meet with their victims, and they address the crime in a safe, mediated environment.
In West Virginia, if a juvenile is referred to and successfully completes a restorative justice program, the state will drop all related criminal charges against that juvenile.
Current state law only allows juveniles facing nonviolent misdemeanors to participate. While the House of Delegates voted unanimously in February to open up the program to all juveniles under House Bill 2094, regardless of their charges, the Senate Judiciary committee voted Monday to step back and extend the program to juveniles facing misdemeanor charges of battery or assault, leaving out violent felonies.
“I see the symmetry that it can bring together, the victim and the perpetrator, and it might drive something home to a kid that the system itself can’t,” said Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell. “You just haven’t really sold me on the fact that we shouldn’t have adjudications on violent felonies.”
Woelfel, a Huntington-area attorney who has worked with victims of violent crimes, was the one who proposed keeping the new violent misdemeanors instead of nixing violent crimes altogether, which the committee was prepared to do.
But, Woelfel said Monday he wasn’t comfortable offering juveniles facing harsher crimes a route to avoid adjudication.
“Doesn’t society have a right for someone who committed a dangerous felony to have some punishment?” Woelfel said.
Del. Dianna Graves, R-Kanawha and the bill’s lead sponsor, said she initially included all crimes in the bill because nationally, other programs have demonstrated that the harsher the sentence, the more effective the program.
That, and no matter what the crime is, the entire process is contingent upon the victim’s desire to participate. Graves said Monday the Senate committee’s changes might take away a victim’s option to safely confront someone who has harmed them.
“When I first introduced this, the version that I had two years ago excluded violent crimes, because, quite frankly, it made me uneasy,” Graves said. “But as I continued researching it, and speaking to experts, what I came to understand was, the victims want this opportunity to confront.”
Kenneth Lang, a criminal justice professor at Glenville State College and a retired homicide detective, agreed Monday with the benefits of restorative justice programs to victims.
“It causes the offender to realize, to address questions about what happened, why it happened,” Lang told senators. “And, what needs to be done to correct, or to right, that wrong.”
Restorative justice isn’t always used as a diversionary tool, Lang said. In other states dealing with adults in the criminal justice system, the process happens after someone is convicted for their crimes.
While working on House Bill 2094, Graves told senators that she researched a juvenile restorative justice program in Colorado.
A third-party review of Colorado’s program found that of the roughly 1,200 juveniles who completed the restorative justice program, roughly 90 percent stayed out of the juvenile justice system for at least a year after finishing.
More than two thirds of the victims who participated were directly affected by a juvenile’s crime. Others were “surrogate victims,” who either witnessed the crime in question or have been impacted by a similar crime.
In West Virginia, the state Department of Health and Human Resources provides funding to two restorative programs — the National Youth Advocate program, which serves 12 counties, and the Juvenile Mediation Program, which works with juveniles in the northern panhandle.
While proponents for House Bill 2094 advocate for opening a restorative justice program in more counties, the bill offers the state no additional funding.
The West Virginia House of Delegates unanimously agreed to advance a bill Wednesday to expand the state’s restorative justice program for juveniles.
Nationally, such programs have demonstrated that by placing young people who have committed a crime face-to-face with the person that they’ve harmed, these juveniles are less likely to commit the same crime twice.
“There’s a veil of anonymity in our criminal justice system, between the victim who’s suffering the impact of the crime and the person who was the offender,” said Del. Dianna Graves, R-Kanawha, the bill’s lead sponsor. “When you see how you have either destroyed a life or negatively impacted it in a really significant way … Every single human being has some level of empathy, and it just becomes awakened during that process.”
In West Virginia, the state Department of Health and Human Resources provides funding to two restorative programs — the National Youth Advocate program, which serves 12 counties, and the Juvenile Mediation Program, which works with juveniles in the northern panhandle.
In most juvenile restorative justice programs, victims voluntarily agree to meet with a juvenile who has harmed them. They discuss the crime with a mediator present, and together they come up with a way that the juvenile can offer restitution.
In West Virginia, success in the program can lead to dismissed criminal charges.
According to current West Virginia law, these programs — which also offer mentoring, family counseling and other wraparound services to reduce recidivism — are only available to juveniles facing nonviolent misdemeanor charges.
As long as both victim and juvenile are willing, House Bill 2094 opens the process up to all juveniles, facing any charges — including those for violent crimes.
“I think there’s a natural tendency to be like, ‘violent crimes?’ But it really makes sense,” Graves said. “With the crimes that have the most impact upon a victim, when the perpetrator is confronted with the impact that they’ve had, you know, there’s a kind of deep guilt when you realize what you’ve done to another person.”
Perry Bennett
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West Virginia Legislative Photography
West Virginia House Delegates voted to pass House Bill 2094 for juvenile restorative justice programs on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2021.
While Graves’ bill expands eligibility for participants, it only allows juveniles to participate once.
“This is not going to be a ‘get out of jail free card.’ You cannot continually go through a restorative justice program,” Graves said.
Looking At The Data
Graves said in researching for her bill, she learned more about a restorative justice program in Colorado, where in 2014 the state legislature agreed to establish a restorative justice pilot.
A third-party review of Colorado’s program found that of the roughly 1,200 juveniles who completed the restorative justice program, roughly 90% stayed out of the juvenile justice system for at least a year after finishing.
Out of the 800 victims who participated, more than two thirds were direct victims of a juvenile’s crime. Others were surrogates, such as witnesses of the crime, or survivors of similar crimes who could speak to the damage done.
The review notes that victim participation in the Colorado program was low, and although most victims expressed they were pleased with the results of the program, only about 60% completed a satisfaction survey. In the document, reviewers write “further exploration is needed to learn how best to integrate harmed parties into the process and ensure their needs are fully met.”
Experts elsewhere say that the process typically benefits victims of crime more than anyone. Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske said it allows victims to ask important questions for closure.
“‘Why did this happen?’ ‘Where did you get the gun?’ ‘Why did you pick me?’ ‘Why did you pick my house?’,” Geske said. “They want to know who this person is, and how they get to a place where they’re committing these crimes.”
Geske retired from the court in the late 1990s, shortly before learning about restorative justice while teaching in a prison. For the last two decades, she’s worked at Marquette University in Milwaukee as an expert and advocate for restorative justice.
For juveniles, restorative justice is more than making participants aware of the consequences of their actions. Geske said it can help juveniles foster a deeper connection to their community.
“It helps by not pushing them out of the community, but by trying to embrace them, and having them understand that they’re a part of the community, too, and they have obligations and responsibilities to people,” Geske said.
Further down the road, Graves said she hopes the bill will reduce the state’s “school-to-prison pipeline,” and maybe eventually lead to reduced overcrowding in adult correctional facilities.
“There’s no way to be tougher on crime than preventing it in the first place,” Graves said. “I mean, you can’t be tougher on crime than that.”
What’s Next?
In discussing House Bill 2094, lawmakers co-sponsoring the legislation and those who considered it in committee haven’t addressed alternatives to juveniles who could benefit from a restorative justice program, should a victim opt out.
Graves has stressed that the bill doesn’t force anyone’s participation – it depends on willingness from both sides.
Geske says that doesn’t necessarily have to be the end-all be-all for restorative justice. Successful programs also include victim surrogates who can help juveniles confront what they’ve done.
Additionally, House Bill 2094, as written, doesn’t entail any statewide expansions for juvenile justice programs.
Some of the state’s most populous counties, like Kanawha and Cabell, aren’t involved in the state’s DHHR-funded programs.
House Bill 2094 now awaits consideration from the Senate.
The House unanimously passed the same bill to the upper chamber during the 2020 legislative session, also written by Graves, but the bill arrived only two weeks before the end of the session and never came up for a vote.
On Monday, advocacy groups and lawmakers held a press conference pushing to decrease the state’s reliance on incarceration, and to keep people who have served their time from falling back into the system.
“There’s not enough programs within the correctional facilities to help deal with the issues that those who offend, and potentially can re-offend, come into,” said Kenny Matthews from the West Virginia Family of Convicted People.
Matthews is a formerly incarcerated person. He says before being paroled, he was able to make connections with people who helped him with transitional services.
He wants these programs to be introduced to others sooner.
“The reason why a lot of people reoffend is because they don’t feel like they have a place, have a sense of purpose, within the community, within the state society in general,” Matthews said.
In the last couple of years, lawmakers have recognized challenges that incarcerated people face when re-entering society, with an expungement act in 2019, and a bill last year to restore driver’s licenses.
This year, Del. Dianna Graves, R-Kanawha, is reintroducing a bill for juvenile restorative justice programs.
In criminal justice circles, restorative justice seeks to rehabilitate the community by connecting people who have committed a crime to their victims. The program only works if victims participate voluntarily.
“We find that all humans are the same,” Graves said. “You know, we all have some kind of level of empathy, and when you face the victim of a crime, and you see their suffering, you don’t want to do it again.”
Last year, the House of Delegates voted to pass Graves’ first attempt at a restorative justice bill for juveniles. The bill died when it reached the Senate, where the Judiciary committee there didn’t schedule it on their agenda for consideration.
Graves said her messaging this year about a restorative justice program is the same.
“If you want to be tough on crime, the best way to do that is to prevent crime in the first place,” Graves said Monday. “And restorative justice programs have shown that that’s what happens.”
The Coalition for Criminal Justice Reform, which organized Monday’s press conference, said they are also working to advance legislation dealing with fairness in employment, voting rights for people on parole and sentencing reform.
Two college freshman spend a night together. There’s inexperience, miscommunication and things go wrong — really wrong.
One of them calls what happened sexual assault, the other calls it rape. But together, they’ve found a remarkable way to recover, heal and learn.
For this episode, Trey speaks with Stephanie Lepp, the producer of the podcast “Reckonings” about the story of Anwen and Sameer and one night that has changed their lives.
