Choosing redemption over imprisonment

The RISE program is showing how restorative justice can be an alternative to mass incarceration

By  Ryan Di Corpo, Oishika Hota, Jiayi Hao, Chang Liu and Ian Weinman

Aaron Smith was lost. A drug dealer and an addict, he felt like an outcast in his community. "When I saw my reflection in people's eyes, it was somebody who was a menace to society, a drug addict. And so I was inclined to act in kind with that," Smith says. A meeting with someone who'd lost a child to drug dealing changed him. "To have that wall broken down by somebody who I would expect to view me that way [and have them say] 'You're somebody who deserves care, who deserves compassion' — that was unbelievably impactful."

Smith, along with Kiyanna Ambers and Yisthen Ynoa went through a rehabilitation program to get the opportunity to potentially reduce their sentences for federal crimes. The Massachusetts-based RISE (Repair, Invest, Succeed and Emerge) program gave them a second chance and helped them repair, in some ways, the harm they had both experienced and caused.

In 2007, Leo T. Sorokin, a federal district court judge in Massachusetts, discovered restorative justice. He listened as an attorney described a group of Neo-Nazis in Oregon who had attacked a synagogue attended by Holocaust survivors, meeting face-to-face with members of the temple to address the harm done. “What came out of that was sort of a reconciliation,” says Sorokin. “[The offender made] amends in a way that was meaningful to them and meaningful to him. …That seemed sensible as an opportunity both for people who were harmed and for the person who did the harm.”

The story inspired him, along with federal probation officer Maria D’Addieco, to start RISE. Founded in 2015, RISE provides people the chance to enter a restorative justice program before sentencing to rehabilitate themselves without going to prison. It’s a small program, but one that offers a possible solution to one of the country’s biggest problems.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were more than one million people incarcerated in the United States at the end of 2021. The imprisoned are much more likely to be Black or Brown. Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of white Americans.

Despite high imprisonment rates, there are few signs that get-tough policies provide rehabilitation. Recidivism statistics for the country are startling. “Within three years of their release, two out of three former prisoners are rearrested and more than 50 percent are incarcerated again,” reads a 2021 report from the Harvard Political Review, which describes these rates as a “crisis.”

“There were many needs that victims had that seemed unsatisfied and unmet by that. And I thought we could do more for people who were harmed,” says Sorokin. The system is failing victims, too. According to the National Survey on Victims' Views, the majority of crime victims feel that the criminal justice system is too focused on incarceration and would prefer to see more investments in prevention and treatment rather than spending more on prisons and jails.

Programs like RISE offer the possibility of meaningful change — for people headed for prison and for victims. According to Jane Peachy, a defense attorney who represents RISE participants, the program provides structure and resources leading to better and rehabilitated citizens. “What restorative justice provides, though, I think is much deeper,” she says. “What you see is a real transformation in the way people look at accountability and their understanding of the crime that they committed.”

The RISE Program

This transformation is at the heart of RISE. The program is designed to help defendants on supervised pretrial release work toward reconciliation and take accountability for offenses. It acknowledges harm.

Defendants must meet one of two criteria to participate: a serious history of substance abuse that contributed to their criminal charge, or a history that “reflects significant deficiencies in full-time productive activity, decision making, or prosocial peer networks.” Previous criminal charges or pending sex offender charges can make them ineligible.

To qualify for the program, defendants on pretrial release must plead guilty within a short period of time, explained D’Addieco. Candidates are evaluated for the program by the Probation Office and a committee, led by a District Court judge, admits defendants to the program. The committee, says D’Addieco, is composed of two magistrate judges, three district court judges, and representatives from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Probation and the Federal Defenders Office.

Accompanied by their probation officer, accepted defendants must then attend monthly hour-long meetings at the federal courthouse while sentencing is delayed for a year. But D’Addieco cautions that participation in the RISE program does not necessarily mean a defendant will receive a reduced sentence.

Ambers recently finished the program and is awaiting trial in August of this year. She has gone through parenting classes and relapse prevention. Additionally, she is also taking her GED. “The experience was heavy and tough to process,” she says. “But now I can see a future after incarceration.”

Ynoa, who began a 12 to 14-week RISE program in early 2022, lives in Lawrence, Mass., with his 12-year-old son. A single father raised by his grandparents in an often combative household, Ynoa believes that RISE helped him process past traumas, overcome drug addiction and transform into a better father. “They didn’t really look at me as a criminal,” says Ynoa. “They looked at me just like a normal person.”

“Aside from the reduction of the sentence, I just really believe that what RISE does has an impact far beyond the courtroom,” says Smith.

Addressing her imminent incarceration, Ambers says, “I am trying to teach my son to write letters to me. I want to show him how important it is for him to stay in contact with me.” Her 16-year-old son is the only child she is allowed to see because of what Ambers calls her “wrong decisions.” She added, “I do not want to lose that in any way, shape or form.”

Jessica Hedges, a Boston-based defense attorney who works with participants, says that these programs are not the solution to “stopping crime completely,” but can lead to a change. “It's an emotional reconfiguration of people. And people may want to stop doing whatever they're doing, stealing or dealing drugs or having guns.” She adds that it is, “very different than having a judge or a prosecutor scream at you about you're a bad person. That reconfigures people in a different way.”

Several years ago, Massachusetts surveyed the first 100 or so RISE participants. Though the sample size was too small to draw broad conclusions, D’Addieco says the data revealed that RISE participants were rearrested at a rate of 16.5 to 17 percent—well below the national recidivism average of 60 to 70 percent.

Peachy emphasizes that despite positive testimonials, the RISE program is not available to everyone in the justice system. “I think the criticism of the program is that not enough people are afforded the opportunity to participate in it,” says Peachy. “I’ve had clients who have applied to the program and they’ve been rejected for various reasons. I’ve had other clients who’ve been rejected because they’re not ready … and their needs aren’t considered severe enough.”

Peachy added that due to the program being exclusive to clients released in the pre-trial phase, “clients who are detained, who might need a program like this the most, they’re not given the opportunity to participate, and that’s disappointing.”

The Circle

At the heart of RISE is “The Circle,” part of a restorative justice initiative that the program partners with. Across several sessions, perpetrators of crimes can decide to meet face-to-face with surrogate victims. They share stories of trauma, loss and recovery. This is key: asking those convicted of crimes to emotionally engage with the harm they have caused and understand the toll of violence on survivors.

H.V., a former circle participant and now a peer mentor asked to use a pseudonym due to being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He moved to the United States as a 13-year-old. Struggling with difficulty adjusting and poor self-esteem, he turned to alcohol and eventually substances at a very young age. “Thankfully, I was caught,” he says. It gave him the opportunity to participate in the restorative justice program. “It made me realize that I was not a mistake, I had just made some,” he says.

Each circle is run by a facilitator. Janet Connors plays that role at many of the circles for the RISE program. In 2001, her 19-year-old son, Joel James Turner, was murdered in his Dorchester apartment during a home invasion. Facing his killers in court marked a turning point for Connors: instead of seeking vengeance, she looked for their humanity. She fought against the bureaucracy to become the first person in Massachusetts to hold a Victim-Offender Dialogue through the corrections system.

“As a survivor of homicide victims, you have to accept the unacceptable and manage the unmanageable. How do you do that and move and really move forward?” Connors says, “I accept that it happened, but I'm going to do everything I can to help it not happen so much anymore.”

When H.V. asked Connors why she chose to relive one of the most traumatic moments of her life for the circle, she says – “I do it for you.” This was a pivotal moment in H.V.’s journey, “A stranger was willing to relive her trauma to help people,” he remembers.

It’s not easy for program participants, according to Erin Freeborn, the executive director of Communities for Restorative Justice. “They're on the hot seat and we are so conditioned to think about punishment.” She added that they worry about survivors' anger. H.V. remembers thinking, “is this really easier than being incarcerated?”

“It was really hard knowing that I was a part of the people who had played a role in destroying their community,” says Jonathan Bermudez, a former participant of the circle. “Just knowing somebody died because of the person, knowing that what I did could kill somebody hurt me.”

“It's about taking accountability and, on a deeper level, appreciating the harm that your actions had on the community or on other people, on your family, on yourself,” says Peachy. “And what can be done to move forward from there, to heal, for their families to heal and for the people who have been affected by their actions to heal.”

Moving Forward

Restorative justice is not without limitations and critics. In a 2016 essay for the New Mexico Law Review, M. Eve Hanan, now an associate professor of law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, writes that restorative justice efforts assign overly-simplistic roles to “victims” and “offenders” without considering the complexities of each case. “Despite the promise of empowerment, restorative justice theory severely curtails party self-determination in several ways, suggesting that it functions more as a method of informal prosecution than as a form of mediation,” she writes.

Hanan views restorative justice, which she states can have profound impact for both victims and defendants, as an “adjunct”—not a replacement—to the criminal justice system. “The rhetoric that restorative justice entrepreneurs, if you will, use is that this is totally separate from criminal legal systems, a true alternative,” she says. “But make no mistake: The folks who do restorative justice do it because it’s either that or court.”

Hanan says that the United States could certainly have “less prison” and suggested that prison environments could be reformed, instead of replaced, to better emphasize rehabilitation.

When asked about the cynics of the program, Smith says, “I just think it completely violates the intrinsic human nature to change. It's a perpetuation and a continuation of a cycle of harm that ends up repeating itself.”

The circle faces resource constraints that impede its ability to expand and enhance its services. Volunteer labor and a limited availability of judges pose significant limitations on program capacity. Beyond the two-day circle sessions, preparing participants and conducting reading groups require considerable resources. While the federal government provides some support, the per-case allocation falls short of meeting the program's needs. According to McNamara, with greater funding, RISE could grow sustainably and cater to more participants, delivering reconciliation and justice to a broader range of victims and offenders.

“Awareness about such programs is of great importance,” says H.V., “especially amongst the legal circles.”

Judge Sorokin intends to “take stock” by gathering people involved in the program, attorneys, probation officers, judges, and ask them: what is, or is not working? And with the feedback that comes his way, push the program to greater heights. “I know there's much more to do, but I'm very pleased so far with where we are,” he says.