| RSVP Endorsers:
La Casa de las Madres
Families and Friends of Murder
Victims
Battered Women's Alternative
Asian Women's Shelter
Manalive Education and Research
Institute
San Francisco Rape Treatment
Center
Third Baptist Church
Providence Church
Amer-I-Can
Urban Fellowship Church
Latino Commission of San Mateo
El Concilio del San Mateo
Mission Counsel on Alcohol
Abuse
Sword to Plowshares
Northern California Service
League
Forensic Medical Services
Linda Connelly Associates/Milestones
San Francisco Community
Substance Abuse Services
Chabad House
Asian American Recovery Services
The Honorable Judge Tomar
Mason
The Honorable Judge Ellen
Chaitin
Geese Theatre Company
The Garden Project
American Jewish Congress |
|
The San Francisco
Sheriff's Department proposes a violence prevention program incorporating
victim restitution, offender accountability, and community involvement
to reduce recidivism, responsibly return ex-offenders to their communities,
and prevent further violence.
Forty-two milllion crimes,
including eleven million violent offenses, were committed in 1994 (Bureau
of Justice Statistics). The human and material costs are unacceptable.
Families grieve for the murdered and maimed. Victims are overwhelmed by
injury, pain and fear. Offender's families suffer in shame as the "good
boy" gone wrong is locked away. Young men, resigned to spending their lives
in and out of prison, hurt each other, themselves, their spouses, families,
friends and neighbors.
Communities are forced
to redirect tax dollars from hope to despair, from education and social
services to criminal justice and incarceration. The RSVP Program brings
together all those harmed by crime--victim, offender, community--to resolve
to stop the violence.
The program is based on
the principles of Restorative Justice:
-
Crime is an offense against
the community, not simply a violation against the state, and creates an
obligation to make things right;
-
Victims have the right to
be heard and to participate in the design and the operation of the program;
-
Offenders learn how to avoid
violence, and are given the opportunity to understand, take responsibility
for, and repair the harm done.
Restorative Justice is justice
for victims, victimized communities, and offenders.
The Sheriff's Department
will designate a sixty-two bed jail dorm as a violence prevention program
for male offenders with current or prior convictions for domestic and other
violence. The program structure will replicate our successful substance
abuse program (SISTER Project).
The RSVP dorm will be
staffed by deputy sheriffs, educational and clinical personnel, peer counselors,
victim rights advocates, and church and community activists. We project
a 50% reduction in recidivism among RSVP graduates.
In-Custody:
250 to 300 men a year
will be required to participate in an intensive jail curriculum which develops
an understanding of the consequences of violence to victims, and changes
men's beliefs about the male-role behavior that causes violence. Inmates
will participate in education, drama and other therapy, life skills, group
learning, and victim empathy and restoration for 14 hours a day, six days
a week, for a minimum of 60 days.
Post-Release:
Upon completion of their
jail term, RSVP graduates will return to the community under the supervision
of Sheriff's County Parole and Alternative Programs. Graduates will continue
mandatory participation in violence-prevention men's groups, education
and job placement programs, and work with community and victim's organizations
to perform violence-prevention services and education, including theater
productions, in schools and community centers. The post-release curriculum
will support ex-offenders to maintain their new beliefs and behaviors,
teach them to become advocates of personal responsibility and nonviolence
in their community, and provide them with opportunities to heal the harm
they have caused.
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