Professor, Students Conduct “Revolutionary” Study of Survivors of Violent Crime

Assisted by two students in the Graduate Counseling Psychology program and two alumni, Castro Rodriguez worked with Californians for Safety and Justice (CSJ).

“I’d worked with their parent organization, Alliance for Safety and Justice, before. We have a similar perspective in that we see that the people who cause harm and the people who experience harm are often the same people, and there’s a cycle to it,” said Rodriguez, who has more than 30 years of experience in trauma-informed care.

“What I noticed in transitions from foster care to juvenile justice to adult justice is that these people [perpetrators of violence] have experienced just as much trauma as victims. We have systemic failure, we have unaddressed mental health issues, and then we have systems that exacerbate people's trauma and don't provide any opportunities for healing or recovering. And all of that makes everyone more unsafe — more at risk of being harmed and more at risk for harming people.”

Rodriguez and her team used the CSJ network to identify and contact crime victims and survivors who were willing to participate, and they distributed surveys asking respondents to identify gaps in the ways they’re currently treated by the criminal justice system. From there, the team visited Oakland, Fresno, and Los Angeles and met with the victims and survivors who agreed to participate in focus groups.

The team’s undertaking was celebrated by Jess Nichols, sister of Polly Klaas, whose 1994 kidnapping and murder prompted California’s Three Strikes Act. Nichols wrote in an op-ed for CalMatters, a nonprofit news organization in Sacramento, “For generations, legislators have claimed to speak for victims while passing laws without ever asking us what we actually think. The survey asks simple but radical questions: What was your experience actually like? What did you need that you didn’t get? What would have helped? This might not sound revolutionary, but it is.”

Team member Indiana Koumrian MA ’27 said the first focus group she attended in Oakland supported the classwork she’s doing in graduate counseling studies. “I remember being nervous on the drive over. I was a junior assistant, and I really wanted to be useful on this project. It’s Dr. Castro Rodriguez's area of expertise, and watching her perform the work she’s passionate about melted the nerves away. I wound up being totally engrossed in our participants’ stories and ready to help translate them into something that would be impactful.”

The data from the surveys and stories from the focus groups became the team’s official report, completed in February. Castro Rodriguez is hoping to publish it.

“I want this publication to be useful, not only to legislators and policy makers, but to service providers and peer survivors themselves,” said Castro Rodriguez. “The way survivors and victims experience the system, they feel unheard. They feel like the people who are providing the services, especially system-based services like the district attorney's office, don't understand survivor experiences. What really floated to the top was how important peer support is. The survivors and victims really benefitted from working with people who had lived experiences similar to their own.”

The team is now looking for funding to visit jails and prisons and speak with people who have been both victims of crime and perpetrators of violence.

“We want to figure out what will make them never commit a crime again,” Castro Rodriguez said. “There are certainly some victims and survivors who say ‘I want them to pay for their crimes.’ And that's valid. But in my experience, there are more survivors who say, ‘I just don't want anyone to go through this pain, or this loss, that I've gone through ever again.’ And we want to help make that happen.”