Authors: Helen Prejean
Victim Offender Reconciliation Program
. Directed by the Office of Criminal Justice, Mennonite Central Committee (see note 4 above). Publishes articles and pamphlets on victim assistance and on the process of victim-offender reconciliation. The latter brings victim and offender into direct communication so that grievances of the victim can be expressed and remorse and reparation of the offender can be rendered — A fragile process and not always possible or successful, but sometimes producing amazing results.
A victim-offender reconciliation program was initiated by inmates at Sing-Sing Prison who wanted to express remorse for their crimes. (For information on meetings, which are held in Sing Sing Prison, contact Russ Immarigeon, 27 Phud Hill Road, Hillsdale, New York 12529.)
Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation
. Provides information about the needs and concerns of victims’ families who are opposed to the death penalty. Core members of the group have had a family member murdered, but membership in the group is open to anyone. Office: 2093 Willow Creek Road, Portage, Indiana 46368, (219) 763–2170.
12.
Victims of Violence Program, Cambridge Hospital, 1493 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, (617) 498–1284.
13.
Survive continues to provide assistance. Office: Children’s Bureau of New Orleans, 921 Canal St., New Orleans, Louisiana 70112, (504) 525–2366.
14.
Louisiana Weekly
, January 26, 1991.
15.
Allen Johnson, Jr., “Dr. Minyard Sees ‘Drug Holocaust’ Among Blacks,”
Louisiana Weekly
, December 9, 1990.
16.
The question arises: why the propensity to violence in the black community? For a good start in answering that question, I recommend Charles E. Silberman’s book,
Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice
(New York: Vintage Books, 1980). Silberman points out that, since the 1970s and into the present, blacks in the United States commit a disproportionate percentage of violent crimes, and then explores the question of whether the propensity to violence is part of the cultural baggage blacks carried with them from Africa or something blacks have learned through their experience in this country. Interestingly, he points out that the homicide rate in black Africa, whence blacks came, is the same as that of western Europe, significantly below the rate of either white or black America. He then explores historically the black experience of the “American dream,” beginning with slavery, and when he’s finished one wonders, as he does, why blacks in poor, inner-city communities are not more violent than they are.
17.
“Almost without exception the courts have refused to interfere with this exercise of discretion [by police]. Courts have determined that citizens may not sue police to force them to make arrests.” David Austern,
The Crime Victims Handbook
(New York: Viking Penguin, Inc., 1987), p. 7.
18.
Walt Philbin, “Tulane Student Slain in Parking Lot near Oak Street Bar,”
Times-Picayune
, October 27, 1990; Walt Philbin, “3 Booked in Rapes, Murder Uptown.”
Times-Picayune
, October 30, 1990.
19.
Michael Perlstein, “Most Killers Escape Prison Sentence, City Records,”
Times-Picayune
, January 13, 1991.
20.
“Chattahoochee Report,” p. 3.
21.
Ibid.
, pp. 9, 10.
22.
Ibid.
, pp. 11, 12.
23.
Rainer Maria Rilke,
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
. (New York: Vintage, 1984).