By Tillie Powell, Graduate Assistant

 

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” – Bryan Stevenson

 

Outside of my time at the MCVP, I am a graduate student in social work and an intern at a community mental health clinic. My experiences in the mental health world, most often working with children and adolescents, have taught me a lot about what it’s like to be human. I’ve seen resiliency, hope, change, and growth. I’ve also seen the devastation that arises from experiencing trauma, including sexual violence. 

When faced with these deeply harmed individuals, I feel an aching for some sort of retribution; my first instinct is a desire for punishment. Yet, I also know that carceral punishment is not true justice. It does not bring healing for most survivors, and it does not change the people who cause harm. 

As a student of abolition, or someone who is working to understand abolition as creating a new world free of systems of oppression including the criminal legal system, it has been complicated to work with survivors and also hold true to the values I have developed working at the MCVP  – including the concepts of non-carcerality, accountability as opposed to punishment, and the idea that no one is disposable.

Punishment is a passive process. Punishment is something done to someone. Accountability is a process that someone engages in actively. They face the harm they have caused and are supported in change. Our current criminal legal systems were not established, nor are they presently equipped, to foster true accountability. 

However, the changes we need are even bigger than accountability processes, especially when we think of prevention. 

When I think of the people who harm others, even as I am so angry and so devastated by the pain they have caused, I also think to myself: what have they experienced? What have they learned about love – have they ever known love? What sort of connections do they have? What are their unmet needs? 

Harm, particularly overt forms of sexual harm, is not committed by people who are healthy, well, and connected to their communities. It is fueled by competition, individualism, isolation, unresolved trauma, and disconnection.

What can we do to form community that is so strong and established that harm is unthinkable and violence never inevitable? 

It starts on an individual level. Ask yourself: 

• What have you experienced in your life that has influenced how you view and treat other people? 
• What makes it easy or hard for you to make connections? 
• How can you develop and cultivate empathy? 
• What does accountability mean to you? 
• How do you react when you learn you’ve hurt someone? 

Each of us has value. Working to understand harm, and people who cause harm are heavy and difficult tasks. Yet, just as the capacity exists within each of us to cause harm, so does the capacity for change and growth. We are all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done, which makes prevention work not only possible, but more than worth it.