Victims of crime: Meeting with a killer
Aug 14, 2009
An interview of Ellen Halbert by Lisa Rea in the current issue of Freedom from Fear Magazine, published by UNICRI.
In 1986, Ellen Halbert was raped, stabbed, beaten with a hammer and left for dead in her home in Texas. During her recovery, she began to speak out about victims’ rights and what needed to change in our “offender-focused” criminal justice system. In 1991, she was appointed by Governor Ann Richards as the first victim to serve on the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, the board that oversees the massive adult criminal justice system in Texas....
....When I was on the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, I had the opportunity to educate myself about the criminal justice system. I took advantage of that opportunity and turned a part-time unpaid position into a full-time unpaid position. I spent six years studying prisons, probation and parole in a very hands-on way. I went to conferences and sat in endless workshops; I visited most of the prisons here in Texas and talked to everyone I could; I got involved in sex offender treatment issues and began to understand more about what works and what doesn’t work in treatment of sex offenders. I spent a lot of time learning about probation and parole as well and, in summary, I became a very educated board member.
However, I found myself searching for something more, but I had no idea what that was. When I toured my first prison, I remember standing in front of one of those tiny cells for two and thinking, “Well, this is definitely punishment, but what kind of person will we be putting back into our community?” The answer came to me when I heard a speech about restorative justice at an American Probation and Parole Conference in the mid 90’s. At that moment, I knew that restorative justice was what I had been looking for and I began searching for a way to get involved. It didn’t take long for me to become an “restorative justice groupie” like so many others. Restorative justice is the more peaceful, hopeful and healing vision of the criminal justice system that I had been searching for....
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It's good to hear victims speaking in their own words about the need for restorative justice, usually victims are used as props by prosecutors and politicians who assume the only possible emotion a victim can have is outrage and the desire to get even by seeing the offender suffer. <br /> <br />The fallout from punitive justice is that offenders punish each other, and when they get out, they punish society. It's what we've taught them, that when someone hurts you, you hurt them back. How can we demand that gangs stop violence when they're doing exactly what we've trained them to do, minus the bureaucratic formalities?