EP 10: The Problem with Punishment and IPV
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is still far too common. It's important to end IPV, on that many of us agree. So is punishing people who hurt their intimate partners going to end IPV? What can we do instead?
For our final episode of Season One, we discuss with a number of women working in the movement: Judith Clark at the Survivors Justice Project, Kassiel Gonzalez at VIP Mujeres, Purvi Shah and Darlene Torres.
Useful Links
Judith Clark discussed her work with the Survivors Justice Project (SVP), including passing the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. To learn more about the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act and if you or a loved one may be eligible, SVP has produced a guide to the law.
Kassiel Gonzalez is the Restorative Justice Program Manager at Violence Intervention Program (VIP Mujeres). Darlene Torres worked for many years at the Anti-Violence Project (AVP).
Purvi Shah is a consultant, researcher, storyteller, and founding leader of The Collaborative For Restoring Healing and Transforming Communities. The collaborative includes A Little Piece of Light, AVP, the Arab-American Family Support Center, Black Women’s Blueprint, Center for Justice Innovations Reimagining Intimacy through Social Engagement (RISE) Project, CONNECT NYC, How Our Lives Link Altogether (HOLLA!), STEPS to End Family Violence at Rising Ground, and VIP.
Purvi mentions the Seeding Generations report, which she worked on as a consultant to the Interagency Working Group on NYC’s Blueprint for Abusive Partner Intervention (IWG), hosted by the Center for Justice Innovation (also available as a resource grid).
For more data on the prevalence of IPV and domestic violence, check out the ENDGBV 2024 Fact Sheet.
Here are some studies proving the efficacy of non-punitive and restorative approaches to IPV:
Using Restorative Approaches to Address Intimate Partner Violence: A New York City Blueprint
Evaluation of ACS’ A Safe Way Forward program (expanded in 2022)
Some resources for survivors:
In addition to the collaborative members listed above - all of whom provide services or support to survivors - Caminar Latino also hosts violence interruption programs for youth, adult individuals, and families in English and Spanish
Day One provides support and programming for young people (under 24) experiencing dating abuse and domestic violence
NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault’s Survivor Resource Guide (English & Spanish)
Transcript:
Kathleen (host): This is the Problem with Punishment podcast. Spoiler alert! The problem with punishment is it doesn't work. But the bigger problem is that we turn to punishment in every aspect of our lives. From our families to our neighborhoods, our boroughs, our city, we keep expecting punishment to make things better when, for the most part, it makes whatever problem we're addressing worse. Every time punishment fails, it hurts. Some people have taken the pain of that failure and turned it into purpose. I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño, and I'll be talking with a range of New Yorkers who have experienced firsthand the failure of punishment and who have found or created something better to do instead. From gun violence to child abuse to drug addiction, New York can lead the way in actually solving some of our most pressing problems. But first, we have to talk about the problem with punishment.
Kathleen (host): Welcome to Episode Ten, The Problem with Punishment and Intimate Partner Violence or IPV. Sometimes people also refer to Intimate Partner Violence as Domestic Violence or DV, which is kind of a larger bucket of violence. But I think for this episode, we're going to talk a lot about "IPV." I will admit, I think the road to hell is paved with acronyms, but intimate partner violence is a really long thing. So sometimes you might hear people, including me, refer to "IPV."
I really want to thank our listeners for your patience waiting for this final episode of season one. It's really taken a while, and this turned out to be kind of a complicated episode to do. Intimate Partner Violence is is far too common. What we're talking about is specifically violence done by one person to another when they have currently or formerly been in a relationship, or they share parenting of a child. It still happens way too much. And I want to start out with some level setting here - it's not a private matter. It's not just a family issue. It doesn't just get better with time. You know, we need to keep stating over and over again that nothing people do in their relationships means that they deserve to be physically harmed or threatened with harm. Nothing you do in your relationship should mean that your partner or your former partner is entitled to physically punish you. And actually, that's one of the strange intersections with punishment culture. You know, when I was young, people would be all like, "oh, he's the man of the house. He gets to keep everyone in line. The patriarch's right to punish people is--you can't take that away from a man!" It was the justification for why it was okay for people to physically harm their partners, to hit them, to beat them, to strangle them. You know, now we're like, 'wait a second.' I mean, I think some people would still justify it, but, you know, it is… There's so many ways that punishment culture has wrapped itself up in how we have talked about Intimate Partner Violence. And when I think about my own journey in really seeing the problems with punishment, the limitations of punishment, it stood out for me when I was working in the movement to end Intimate Partner Violence. That was when I first started questioning how I thought about punishment.
So this was also like, this was a while ago, this was back in the 1990s. I was working at a Domestic Violence program--that's what we called it back then--what we would now call an Intimate Partner Violence program. And we were still in the first decade of the Violence Against Women Act and how that really transformed, I think, also the way that that government and some of these punishment entities were working to address this issue. And I was part of a community of people where we had – mostly women, many of them survivors of IPV – and we agreed that that the mission was ending family violence. And I increasingly found myself wondering how the threat of institutional punishment, the threat of cops and prisons was actually going to end violence in families. And punishment has wrapped itself up in this in a lot of complicated ways.
So this is one of the topics--and this has come up a few times in this first season--where we really found ourselves saying, "wow, we could do a whole season just on this issue." You know, that was the conversation when we talked about schools. I think we could do a whole season on the problem with punishment and homicide; definitely drugs; you know, definitely parenting. Like there were just so many things that we've tried to cover in this first season. So for this one though, we're going to do what we've done in all the episodes. I talked to a bunch of people. We're going to go on this journey where we weave all these different conversations together. And I just want to come back to our starting point, which is our goal is to end violence. And that includes ending violence within families and ending violence between people who have been intimate partners. We're going to start the journey of this episode with the voice of one of our guests, Judith Clark, the director of the Survivors Justice Project.
Judith Clark: If you ask most people who have experienced harm what they want, they want relief. They want change in their lives. They want the person who harmed them to be challenged to change so that they no longer harm them or anyone else. Prisons are not designed for that. Prisons are designed to punish. Our culture thinks that the, you know, the iron fist of punishment is what's going to solve problems.
Kathleen (host): Judith has worked with survivors of many different forms of violence, and so when she's talking about our faith in punishment, you know, the iron fist of punishment to solve these problems, she is talking about a number of different forms of harm where we've tried to use punishment. And if you've been listening to this podcast or living your life, you've probably noticed all the different places that punishment doesn't work. But the commitment to using systems of punishment persists among many of the people who are working to end Intimate Partner Violence. And this conversation, you know, was an active conversation when I was more active in the movement 30 years ago, and it continues even until now. I think there are still a number of great organizations that still think we're going to attune punishment correctly, that it's going to start working to end Intimate Partner Violence, that we're just going to figure out how to fix all the consistent problems when state violence, like systems of punishment consistently target Black people, Latine people, Native people, other communities of color, poor folks--consistently target them. But not every part of the intimate partner violence movement agrees about that. And we get to talk to a few great people in this episode, including Judith. We're also lucky in New York City that we have the Violence Intervention Program, or VIP Mujeres, founded in 1984, based in Harlem. (Have you noticed how many episodes we keep going back to Harlem in this podcast?) And they have started incorporating restorative approaches into their work. And we got to talk to a couple folks from VIP Mujeres. This is Kassiel Gonzalez, who runs their Restorative Justice Program.
Kassiel Gonzalez: VIP {Mujeres} has been offering services for Domestic Violence for a very long time and the Restorative Justice Program at VIP is the first of its kind. It's the first time that we've ever introduced a program with the restorative justice kind of values and mindset. And the first time in which a historically survivor-only DV organization is open to working with the partner that is causing harm as well. So right now, the program, which is very new, we're still in our first year. We offer a kind of a community-oriented path and then also an individual case-work path. So for individual cases, that's sort of what we had designed the program to be for. It's someone coming in like a survivor coming in calling to VIP through our hotline for DV help. And based on their situation and what they're looking for now, they have this option where they might say, “I don't want to go to the police. I don't want the system involved at all. My partner is looking for help.” And I've had those calls before, back when I was a counselor – I was a counselor for about four years – and I would get calls from survivors who say, "my partner is looking for help, like we both are looking for help." And I wouldn't really know where to turn them to because we couldn't really accept them. And I didn't know of any other organizations doing that work either.
Kathleen (host): And Kassiel's a great, unique person. But the experience that Kassiel is describing is not that unique. And obviously other people at VIP Mujeres had also started to notice the same thing.
Kassiel Gonzalez: The other directors, they went out into the community and conducted a survey. Because I think from what they were seeing – and for example, that example that I said when I would get calls, sometimes saying 'my partner wants to come in because they want to seek help and we didn't know where to send them’ – so there were just small moments that I think the leaders here at VIP Mujeres were seeing of, there's a gap in in what our, our community is asking for. Like there are certain things they're asking for that we can't provide them with and no one can provide them with.
Kathleen (host): Now, the folks at VIP Mujeres are not the first ones to hear this request. They're not the first ones to hear about this gap in what their organization is offering people. But they did make a really different decision by offering it. And I'll just admit that when I was working in an organization, you know, back then again, we called it like, you know, working to end domestic violence. When people ask like, "well, what can you do? Can you do anything for this person who's hurting me?" Our answer was, "No, we can't. Nothing can be done. There's nothing. You just have to let them go." And that's a non-answer. So I want to acknowledge that VIP Mujeres is doing the work of answering what the community is asking for in a substantive way.
Kassiel Gonzalez: If we have a survivor coming into the organization, they're saying that their active partner who's causing them harm is looking for help, they want to end this, that person is seeking and willing to receive help, we would start an individual case with them. So there would be like prep meetings involving the survivor and myself, also my co-facilitator. Then we would also be meeting with that partner that's been causing harm, also separated. And there would be a lot of individual sessions together. Like to see what the goals are for the family, what they're really looking for in terms of how VIP can help.
Kathleen (host): I'm going to pause us there just for a second, to acknowledge that Kassiel is talking about the folks that they work with at VIP Mujeres in terms of being "a survivor." That they work with an individual person who is a survivor of intimate partner violence. When I do conversations for the podcast, a lot of times I will ask guests, "hey, is there a language that you particularly want me to use or particularly want me to avoid?" And in this episode, one thing that came up was, "you know, we refer to people as, as not 'victims' of intimate partner violence, but 'survivors.' And we really want to respect people's agency that they still get to make choices." And one of the more questionable choices is like, well, 'why don't you want this person punished? Why do you want to stay connected to them? Are you just throwing yourself under the bus?' Let's, you know, go back to Kassiel talking about why people want some of these alternatives. Some of it is the very standard. Like how when you love people, you can see them as more than the worst thing they've ever done. But there are other good reasons why a person might not be interested in drawing in systems of punishment. In bringing in police and the courts to help them deal with the violence happening within their relationship.
Kassiel Gonzalez: I think when you have relationships that one involve, you know, people not being in their home country, they don't have their support system around them. So that partner that may be causing them a lot of emotional harm and psychological harm are also the only person that they know in this country - like that is their sole person of support and companionship and love as well, in the way that they have come to know love between them. So that's really difficult to ask someone then to just leave that entire person that they know, and especially when there might be a language barrier and there might be financial dependency.
Kathleen (host): And there also might be children involved.
Kassiel Gonzalez: When families have children involved and survivors say, "I've seen him be a fine father, like a good father. I would like to co-parent. I just don't want to be in this relationship anymore. But we need to talk about them, like this type of harm. Because I don't want that, you know, to affect my children." So there's just so many different family dynamics that we see and a varying range of people. In my experience, I've seen men want to come and talk to us about the experience at home, because there is this cycle that does happen a lot, like we cause harm unintentionally. The person that's causing harm in a family might also not be the direct abuser, and we're seeing that. So in some of the cases that we're working on right now, the teenage children are repeating abusive behaviors to their younger children or like the younger siblings. And it's learned behavior. I think the survivors are very excited to see that there are more options on the table.
Kathleen (host): We're going to zoom out from the conversation with VIP Mujeres, who's doing this work on the ground in the real world with survivors of Intimate Partner Violence, to talk to New York City's own Purvi Shah. So for years, Purvi Shah co-coordinated with Charlene Allen, the Collaborative for Restoring, Healing and Transforming Communities. And there were nine organizations in the Collaborative. The organizations are generally based in communities of color, because communities of color have to struggle with both interpersonal violence and also the amount of state violence directed at our communities by systems of punishment. So I'll let Purvi talk a little bit about her work around intimate partner violence and how she got started.
Purvi Shah: I came to the work around Intimate Partner Violence because of my own investment in gender justice. I came to working with women because of that family history. And then I also witnessed and saw within extended family, within our community, South Asian communities how often there was abuse, violence in a family. And that could be the spectrum of, you know, what people conventionally think of as abuse, which is physical abuse, but it could also be emotional abuse, financial control and harm. And I was seeing the spectrum of these behaviors and that folks didn't necessarily have tools to respond, and they certainly weren't going to necessarily go to police or criminal justice agencies to get resources and support. We all deserve to be in healthy, loving relationships. And in fact, healthy, loving relationships exist and that we can work towards that.
Kathleen (host): Purvi also was at one point the executive director of Sakhi, an organization working to end Intimate Partner Violence in South Asian communities here in New York City. And as part of that, she heard a thing that Kassiel talked about that I've also experienced of a request coming from survivors.
Purvi Shah: Oftentimes, survivors would come to us saying, "I don't want to leave. I want the abuse to stop." And, you know, I think from our vantage point, we didn't have at that time in the early 2000s or 2000, we didn't have as many tools and resources as a field. This work, particularly around having restorative responses for Intimate Partner Violence, is a call from survivors often. So one of the survivors I spoke with said to me, "there's a list of numbers for the victim. I haven't seen any services for the abuser so they can get help. I would like to see that being offered." It's so painful to see this is the norm.
Kathleen (host): Right?
Purvi Shah: And so survivors are asking for these services, and they're asking for these services because they know that people are going to get into new relationships, going to be in the community, they might even be in a co-parenting relationship. So it's, even if you happen to close a certain part of a relationship, you still may have to see that person. And so, you know, the importance of behavior change is fundamental.
Kathleen (host): One of the great things about talking to Purvi is that she brings years of her work at Sakhi, years of, you know, co-coordinating this collaborative for transforming harm, and also her years of experience as a researcher, specifically listening to survivors of Intimate Partner Violence.
Purvi Shah: I think one of the things that works against us is this sense that people cannot change. One of the other survivors I interviewed said, quote, "Even the detective said, zebras don't change their stripes." And then she went on to say, "in the big picture, if we're saying abusers are not going to change, is that a constant? Is the responsibility then put on the abused instead? That's so weird. And I don't think anyone is immune from being an abuser or abuser."
Kathleen (host): Right. I mean, yeah, if the premise is that, like, once we have a habit of creating harm, we could never change, then basically we're kind of all doomed.
Purvi Shah: That's exactly right. It's also just not true. And I love that there is evidence coming out and showing that this is the case. But we know from our own lives and experience that we change throughout our lives. Is it easy? No, it's not easy. And we change because oftentimes people we love, people who we are in community with want us to behave differently, want us to grow. And so change, you know, as Octavia Butler said, is God and change is constant. And it's just a question of like, how are we changing? In what ways are we changing? And do we have support for change? When we punish people, do we actually educate? Do we actually rehabilitate? Do we actually ask for transformation? As part of the process of this – again, amazing policy work and research I got to do in partnership with New York City towards producing a report called Seeding Generations, which anyone can access on the Center for Justice Innovation website. As part of this process, I got to observe various programs. What we call abusive partner intervention programs or programs for people causing harm. And one of the programs I observed was a program for that--had been court mandated. Basically, the court had mandated in this context that folks had to go to this X number of week program. And what I witnessed is that men, because it was all men, would come sign in, sit around in a circle, and, like, barely participate. In fact, the day that I was there, one participant talked about a context of being drunk and harming their partner. And there was no intervention after that person shared that story. There was no sense of responsibility or accountability. There was no questioning of the behavior. It was almost like an implicit validation of that person's triggers or limitations or substance use. And so I realized through that firsthand experience, when we mandate folks to court mandated programs, they sometimes simply go check off that they're attending. And there's actually no real transformation and behavior.
Purvi Shah: With a restorative response. We are actually asking the question, "who should take responsibility? What is the harm? How can the harm be addressed and what needs to change?" It's not as simple as just being like, "you get punishment! And you get punished! And you get punishment!" It's a much deeper question of like, how do we want to be with each other? What traumas have you experienced? Both a person who is experiencing harm and the person who is causing harm. And then how do we address that? How do we shift these dynamics? How do we learn to actually emotionally regulate? How do we learn to communicate better? How do we learn to have different triggers? All of those are key questions in terms of I honestly lifetime process of change.
Kathleen (host): I mean, one of the great things about talking to Purvi also is that she makes it sound like a lot of work and also possibly like it could be fun. But, you know, honestly, like changing yourself, especially, changing the ways in which we harm people is hard, hard work. Most of us are not that good at it. I am not that good at it, personally. So I really appreciate anyone who can show us a way forward, show us how it can be done. And so for that, let's start talking and listening to Darlene Torres, who worked at the New York City Anti-Violence Project for many, many a moon, and then switched to doing some work on her own, working directly with people who have caused harm.
Darlene Torres: Part of my work within the New York City Anti-Violence project was coordinating and supporting the national work of AVP through the National Coalition of Anti-Violence programs, probably forty organizations across the country working to end violence within and against LGBTQ communities. And it was in those conversations, you know, with partners across the country at our annual roundtable, you know, conferences and meetings where a group of us started talking about people causing harm. Right. And you know, how we are directing a lot of our energy, you know--and rightly so--you know, working with survivors and like, what does it mean to be survivor-centered? And what does it mean to do prevention work? And we kept coming back to conversations around, well, the burden is always on almost always on the survivor. Right? They need to safety plan. They need to move. They need to change where they work. They need to, you know, fill in the blank. And what would it mean to actually talk to the people who cause harm? And really just also thinking about what we kept hearing from survivors, right. "I don't want my partner to be harmed by the community. I don't want to call the police. I'm a harm reductionist." You know, and thinking about, like, in theory, yeah, this sounds amazing, right? Let's meet the person where they're at. But then in practice, it is difficult because of how we're socialized, how we're conditioned to think it's very binary. And here we are, queer people talking about like pushing against folks who are like, 'don't think in binary ways.' And yet we are thinking in binary ways, right. And I feel like so often, before the conversation would even get started, it was shut down, you know. And then as a social worker, I had to think about, okay, my whole, you know, goal in the work that I do is like thinking about the person in the environment, right? Like what's going on, what's happening, and resistance, what is the resistance here? Right. Because resistance means something. It means that someone's trying to survive, right? Like, what are we resisting? And so it's like, okay, people are resisting or resistant to the idea of working with people who cause harm.
Kathleen (host): Okay. And this is where I have to cop to being to one of those women working in the movement to end intimate partner violence that at one point was like, "there's no point in working with people who abuse. There's no point in working with abusers." I'm sorry. Because right back then I would not have said 'people who abuse.' I would have said, "Abusers, they're monsters!" But like all people, if I pause and think about myself when I'm harmed, the habit is to say I want someone to be punished or my habit has been, I want somebody to be punished. But when I mess up, when I hurt someone, I want understanding. I want mercy. I want the option of not doing that harm again. Obviously I have hurt people. And when I think specifically about myself as like a teen or a young adult dating, I'm like, yeah, I was a horrible, horrible girlfriend. And how did I get better? I mean, that comes back to thinking about when we are doing harm. How do we do better?
Darlene Torres: What we heard over and over in group is the shame that is associated with causing harm. And that's what punishment does, right? It shames us. I truly believe that it is survivor-centered work to work with people who cause harm. It's part of the prevention work that I've been doing all of these years, since 1999. You know, really thinking about, you know, what does it mean to end violence and how will we move to ending violence? Or to support people living free from violence? And that is, in my opinion, talking and working with people who cause harm to better understand what is going on. You know, and to really call them into holistic accountability. Right where we're seeing the full person and not just parts of them, you know, and that we are giving them the opportunity and the space to unpack the why, to unpack the reasons. Right. I think about, like my loved ones, you know, who have caused harm. And I think I don't want, I wouldn't want them to be punished. I mean, they have been punished, and I've seen the harm that that's caused.
Kathleen (host): It's frustrating and understandable that people question the importance of working with people who have acknowledged that they're doing harmful things. It's controversial within the movement to end Intimate Partner Violence. You know, as if we could end it without actually giving people tools to do things instead of harming others. You know? And I wanna come back to, I think there is disagreement within the movement to end Intimate Partner Violence. I think there's probably some disagreement in the broader community. But let's come back to what the big picture is, which is a movement to end intimate partner violence. And I want to go back to Purvi talking a little bit more about some more organizations that have looked at things to do.
Purvi Shah: I think ultimately we want to work towards a world where violence doesn't happen. We cannot do that if we're not invested in actually building healthy relationships. Showing people that there are different ways, and doing education around that and engaging people to actually transform behavior. There is a collaboration called Safe Way Forward with Safe Horizon and Children's Aid and expanded to Mercy First, where they are working with whole families. In that they did an evaluation in June 2022, and what they showed is with the families that they were working with, there were improvements in emotional self-regulation and communication. And that not only did survivors feel stronger, which is what they reported. People who are causing harm felt like they actually had new solutions. They were able to, like, actually behave differently.
Kathleen (host): I mean, it's hard to change ourselves. It's hard to learn to behave differently. I say that as a parent, as a partner, as a friend, as a community member. What works? Like how do we create spaces where we can take accountability for harm and change our behavior? And for that, I turn back to Darlene and her work.
Darlene Torres: The groups that I've run for folks that cause harm are self-identifying. They're not mandated. So people really being at a place, you know, in their process and saying to themselves and being as vulnerable and courageous and saying, "I've caused harm." Or "I think I'm going to cause harm," or "I think I caused harm, but I'm not entirely sure. So I think this group might be good for me to be able to unpack some of the things." But I think, you know, all of that is to say, you know, that we have allow ourselves to sit with the discomfort and sit with the somatic feelings that come up, so that we can be able to move through that. And not push through it, but actually move through it, in conversations with each other, and honor those parts of us that are like, really awakened and really feeling like so passionately like, 'no, we cannot do this.’ Right, because those parts of us are telling us something. And most often it's about our fear or maybe our own survivorship, you know, and the harm that we experience as survivors. You know, and how can we take care of all of those parts in these conversations and also trust in the process and trust that we're going to hold each other.
Kathleen (host): And we're going to close out this part of the episode, hearing from Purvi about just, you know, that there are a lot of restorative options out there.
Purvi Shah: I definitely believe that programs should pursue restorative approaches and be intentional about it. There are models, including the Chat project in California. And folks who have done a lot of work like Mimi Kim, Sujatha Baliga, in terms of supporting restorative responses with a lot of care and integrity. And again, some of these ways of being have been part of our families and cultures and communities for a long time. I really want to recognize that we draw upon indigenous peacemaking and dialogue. And that this is a tradition within various cultures and communities of conflict resolution and enabling community harmony. I also know, again from my hearing and working with survivors, how crucial this is to have alternatives. Punishment is exclusion. Punishment is everyone saying, "there is no hope for you." Whereas the key elements of a restorative response: accountability, repair and healing. And again, when we think about what many survivors want, they actually want somebody to acknowledge that something wrong is happening, that this is not okay.
Kathleen (host): I want to wrap up this section with an acknowledgement that I know for people who have done this work for many years, this is really provocative. It's really challenging. I want to come back to the mantra that I was first trained in. When I first started answering a crisis line in 1989, what I taught so many other women to do over the years. Which is--our job is to offer people options to help people create options to keep everyone safe, but not to say that safety is what we say it is. So I encourage you going to a musical interlude to like, take a breath, reach out to people like ask. And just know that once we're ready to start questioning how we fix harm without punishment, it means that we can acknowledge when we've done things wrong without having to worry about being cast out. And survivors are counting on us to find new ways to do this work and to end IPV.
musical interlude
Kathleen (host): So that was hopefully a chance for you to take a few breaths, kind of ground and regather. And we're going to switch gears and talk about the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. And the work that has come from that act in the last few years here in New York.
It's important for us to remember that these systems of punishment sometimes can be really helpful for survivors. They can help people get out of dangerous situations. That is true. And other times, these systems of punishment, the criminal legal system that people turn to or get pointed towards can be really hurtful and destructive to survivors, and cause more harm, not less harm. And I think a really classic example of that was the advent of mandatory arrest laws. You know, when I was doing this work in the 90s, you know, it was early in the years of mandatory arrest laws. And it turned out that, you know, requiring police to make an arrest when they went to or responded to an Intimate Partner Violence call far too often meant that they wound up arresting the survivor of the abuse. And so, you know, we just see how these systems of punishment are directed towards survivors, especially when those survivors are Black and Latine. So we're going to turn back to Judith Clark, who we heard at the top of the episode to explain more about the law, what it does, and the work by survivors that led to the law's enactment.
Judith Clark: Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act was a product of of a campaign that was led by survivors of both domestic violence and also long-term incarceration. And we recognize that the dynamics of incarceration actually reproduce so many of the same power dynamics, that of power and control that people have experienced in relationships. It's a law that was passed in 2019 after a ten-year struggle that, as I said, was led by women, primarily women of color, who had themselves emerged from incarceration or were still incarcerated. Its roots actually come from an event that was held in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. I myself was incarcerated for 37 years, most of that time in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, which is the maximum security prison for women in New York State. And in 1985 we held two hearings that were public hearings in which legislators, judges, lawyers, district attorneys came into the prison and a group of women who were survivors of domestic violence testified on record about how their experience of domestic violence had led to the offenses for which they were incarcerated and to their incarceration. And it was really the beginning of trying to break open a discussion about how pervasive domestic violence is. It was a law that said that if you can show a relationship between someone's experience of domestic violence in the period of time that the offense took place and the offense that they should be sentenced to significantly lesser sentences than the draconian high sentences that are the mandatory minimums in New York State.
Kathleen (host): Every episode of the podcast, we have relevant links on the page, and this episode we have that as well. So we have a link to the Domestic Violence Survivors Project website, and in it they have the entire video of the Bedford Hills hearing from 1985. It's a matter of public record, and I want to pause and acknowledge that. Sharon White-Harrigan worked on the passage of the Domestic Violence Survivors Act for many years. She's, you know, part of the podcast team and was, I think, instrumental in us saying, like, let's include it here. Because when we talk about how punishment is intersected with survivors of IPV, we really have to acknowledge this. You know, it really requires taking a more complex view. It's never that we're saying that if you were harmed and then you turn around and harm someone, it's okay. But it is about taking a more complex view of how harm creates more harm. Let's turn back to Judith.
Judith Clark: People who experience harm can then go on to do harm. One of the things that we think is important is that, again, if you break down the dichotomy between victim and perpetrator, then it enables people to recognize that part of the healing is taking responsibility for one's own participation in harm. So in this instance, we're we're not--someone's conviction is not overturned by this law. The sentence is modified. And in that sense, it's saying in the context of recognizing one's own experience of domestic violence, that that process allows someone also to recognize and take back their power, which includes taking back the responsibility of recognizing the harm that they've also caused. And that's that's the way in which the law opens up a very different perspective of that. That is much more restorative. It's saying restoration involves change, involves people having the capacity, the power to define their own lives. And part of that is recognizing one's own responsibility and not being defined by either their own victimization or the worst act that they ever perpetrated.
Kathleen (host): Again, this complex view is a lot more work than just turning to punishment and assuming that it can just magically solve all of our problems. And that the more harsh the punishments, the more effective that they are.
Judith Clark: The iron fist of punishment only cloaks the real problem. It keeps our minds away from and our resources away from the enormous effort that does have to go into addressing the problem. It gives us the illusion of protection, when actually all it's doing is multiplying the problem and justifying the inequities of our society that actually lead to so much of the harm that we cause. It's punishment, but it's, you know, they say, we don't get to pay our debt. We get to pay our debt when we actually do the work of repair. And that's what people want to do. People want to do the work of repair inside and outside, in their communities, with their families, with their children.
Kathleen (host): So we've talked to several people who are coming at the problem of Intimate Partner Violence with different approaches, but with one common focus, which is how do we address the harm? How do we prevent the harm? How do we repair the harm? Harm is the common denominator. And let's turn back to Kassiel of VIP Mujeres
Kassiel Gonzalez: We're all capable of harm. And I think people forget that. And it is very easy to 'other' somebody when something like that has happened, when a real harm has happened. We don't reduce a survivor to that experience. And I think that's also why maybe they even like to use "survivor," because it depends on a lot of other situations. But they're not just a victim of that experience, you know, they're a full person. And I think when it comes to someone causing harm, reducing them to that experience and having that, that kind of moment, you know, this terrible moment where they harmed someone else and they feel that shame and they feel that guilt and embarrassment over it – have it be a label for the rest of their lives makes it really difficult to move forward. It makes it very difficult to change. And in almost, almost every story, at least that I've heard, it's been, you know, oh, he does this and he does that and it's harmful. But I also know that he was harmed as a child, and he was harmed when this happened. And so like we just see that the common denominator is people are being harmed and have been harmed for years.
Kathleen (host): I can't possibly say it enough. In this episode, the guests can't say it enough. But these options exist because survivors are asking for them. Something doesn't have to work for every single survivor to make it an option for some survivors.
Kassiel Gonzalez: Survivors are very excited to have another option on the table that doesn't involve the criminal legal system. We also have groups of survivors that--you know, coming to VIP--they talk about their experience going through the criminal legal system and calling the cops and having arrests made, and it was very traumatic. After explaining what we'd be able to do in the Restorative Justice Program for the individual cases, a lot of the community survivors expressed how much they wished they had had that option five years ago or six years ago or seven years ago.
Purvi Shah: We need more options for survivors. We need more options for our communities beyond punishment.
Darlene Torres: I'm not trying to sell this as easy. It's not. It is very difficult work. And I think that there are people, you know, who will choose to go down that route and support that movement. And then there are people that will continue to work with survivors, your traditional, you know, definition of survivors. And you know what? Okay. Right. But I think that for anyone listening, you know who is kind of, like, interested in and curious and thinking like "ooh. I feel like I'm kind of like, I want to learn more, and I want to talk more about this," like, come on. Like there's a group of us, you know, nationally, locally, right, that are really eager and excited.
Kathleen (host): This podcast was produced in Brooklyn, New York. The unceded ancestral lands of the Lenape and the Canarsie people. We thank all the ancestors for caring for this land over the generations, and we're committed to the work of creating a shared future that includes the Native communities that are still here, and all the people who call this land home.
We have so many wonderful guests to thank for this episode. First, from VIP Mujeres, we talked to Kassiel Gonzalez and also to Judith, who shared how VIP came to be doing this work. We spent a wonderful evening on-site, but due to technical issues that audio lives in my heart but not the final episode. Thanks also to Margarita Guzman and Maria Eugenia for welcoming us in. Thanks to Judith Clark of the Survivors Justice Project, and for all that she has taught people for responding to violence and oppression. Thanks to Purvi Shah for bringing so many different layers of experience to this work and this episode. Thanks, Darlene Torres, for breaking down what some of this work can look like in the real world. Charlene Allen was a reviewer for this episode, and this is where I want to thank Charlene and Cameron Rasmussen and all the folks at the Center for Justice, for all the steady support to finish this podcast. This is my final thank you to the podcast team for season one Doctor Candacé King, Reverend Doctor Sharon White-Harrigan, and Tess Weiner. And for this particular episode, it was Sharon who really said, we really should include the Domestic Violence Survivors Act. So thank you. Thanks to our production partner, JuleCave Studios, led by our patient and diligent creative partner, Julius Shephard-Morgan.
This is the final of the ten episodes we planned for Season One. Will there be a Season Two? I don't know. If you find this podcast useful, rate us. Tell your friends and family about it. If there's an issue you wish we would cover, you can let us know via email. JusticeBeyondPunishment@gmail.com. Your question or comment might be what leads to a second season. It has been a privilege and an honor to talk to so many visionary and yet practical New Yorkers. People who have found or created things that work better than punishment. If there's one thing you take away from this podcast, it's that the choices we're offering aren't between punishment and inaction. We're asking people to choose things that work to either prevent harm or repair it.
I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño. This podcast is a project of the Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, with support from Trinity Wall Street. You can learn more about the Collaborative and all our creative projects at BeyondPunishment.org. Thanks for listening.
