Doctoral Dissertation Research: Beyond the Law: Responding to Sexual Violence with Restorative Justice

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Restorative justice programs in the United States have seen success in cases involving juveniles and minor crimes. However, using restorative justice in the area of sexual violence remains contentious. Proponents highlight the problems survivors face in the criminal justice system, and claim that restorative justice is “survivor-friendly.” On the other hand, opponents raise concerns about further harm restorative justice causes to survivors due to the intimate nature of the crime. It is still largely unclear how alternative justice meets survivors’ needs and still enacts offender accountability. This research project will examine the lived experience of restorative justice to better understand to what extent restorative justice reproduces systematic harm in cases of sexual violence while challenging the existing criminal justice system. Critical analysis of what “survivor-friendly” justice means to different social actors such as survivors, offenders, restorative justice practitioners, and the society at large,is indispensable to the development of resources and policies that address survivors’ needs and best practices for restorative justice programs and the traditional criminal legal system. This project will be conducted at community-based restorative justice programs in the Pacific Region where several programs are operated in the United States. Restorative justice programs for sexual violence are mainly implemented at the community level, outside of the criminal legal system. This project asks: Do these restorative justice programs offer a more survivor-centered justice, or do they continue to mirror problems found within the criminal legal system? What does justice mean to the survivors of sexual violence? To examines these questions, this research employs qualitative methods including participant observation of individual restorative justice cases, and interviews and focus groups with survivors, offenders, and facilitators of restorative justice programs. Research findings will attend to the specificities of how survivors navigate their own experiences and frameworks of justice against societally held understandings of sexual violence and internal power dynamics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.