Crime, victimization, and the rights of victims are compelling public concerns. Twenty three million crimes, including 5.3 million violent offenses, were committed in 2002 (Bureau of Justice Statistics). The human and material costs are unacceptable. Families grieve for the murdered and maimed. Victims are overwhelmed by injury, pain, and fear. Offenders' families suffer in shame. Young men, resigned to spending their lives in and out of prison, hurt each other, themselves, their spouses, families, friends, and neighbors.
After years of implementing programs and, still, watching the same people return to jail three or four times a year for violent offenses, it became clear that as a law enforcement agency the San Francisco Sheriffs Department (SFSD) had an obligation to take intelligent chances in addressing the problem of violence.
The idea for Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP), SFSD put new meaning into law enforcement's obligation to "keep the peace" and "to protect and serve."
RSVP was founded by Sunny Schwartz, SFSD Program Administrator, in collaboration with Assistant Sheriff Michael Marcum and Captain Rebecca Benoit, and under the general direction of Sheriff Michael Hennessey. In the process of it's inception, nonprofit agency Community Works became a founding partner and primary provider.
Planning for RSVP began in October 1996, when Ms. Schwartz called together forty members from diverse and opposing backgrounds and viewpoints, and for eighteen months, deputy sheriffs, former gang members, housewives, victim rights advocates, rabbis, ministers, Republicans, Democrats, pro-death penalty enthusiasts and their opponents, feminists, and formerly abusive men all worked together on the planning stages. The differences dissolved as the group focused on its collective mission and used the principles of restorative justice to guide their planning and vision. These individuals met monthly to develop the outlines of the project and to build community support.
A smaller management team composed of Sheriff's Department staff, victim rights advocates, manalive consultants, community-based agencies, and service providers met weekly to design the offender curriculum as well as training and implementation plan. Subcommittees met to develop the survivor restoration and community restoration components, including curricula and systematic ways that a violent offender can restore the harm he has caused in the community.
These committees included representatives of the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, the Probation Department, and the Commission on the Status of Women, among others, as well as domestic violence shelters and other victim advocate groups.
Since September 15, 1997, approximately 300 male offenders per year have participated in RSVP. Fifty percent of them were charged with domestic violence and fifty percent with general violence such as robbery, assault, rape, and terrorist threats. While there are a number of restorative justice projects throughout the nation, it is RSVP's unique combination of mandated male-role reeducation and post release programs supporting ex-offender accountability, victim restoration, and violence prevention that sets a new standard in criminal justice.
