🧨 The Dangerous Oversight in Some “Alternative Justice” Conversations

In the push for restorative or alternative justice, one painful reality is too often left behind:

👉🏾 Victims have a right to safety.

Not imagined safety.
Not theoretical safety.
Not “community-accountability-if-everyone-agrees” safety.

Real. Physical. Emotional. Psychological. Safety.

And too often, alternative justice frameworks miss the mark entirely.

🔥 What’s Missing:

• Violence escalates.
  It almost never de-escalates on its own. Not without interruption. Not without accountability. Not without real, lasting protection for the person who was harmed.

• Some people do not stop.
  Even after they’re arrested. Even after they’re confronted. Even after they’re “restored.”
  There are perpetrators who will stalk, threaten, harass, or manipulate others into doing it for them—while claiming to be “healing.”

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• Don’t ever forget the victims of the Goma jailbreak. The men escaped. Rather than keep running, they went to the women’s jail nearby. Attacked them. Raped them. Set them on fire.   Not everyone wants “freedom” like you do. They want the freedom to harm as many people as they can. 

• Some people are mentally ill, and they are not treatment-compliant.
  That’s not judgment. That’s fact.
  Ignoring this does not make it disappear. It puts Survivors and their friends and families at risk—again.

• The gravity of violence is being minimized.
  When someone has seen up close what human beings are capable of doing to each other—what it takes to survive a violent partner, a stalker, a serial abuser—some alternative justice advocates sound naive at best, and cruel at worst.

💔 Survivors, Their Families, and Communities Are Right to Be Terrified

They are not overreacting.
They are not punitive.
They are not against healing.

They have lived through the kind of harm that many people only read about. And they know something that cannot be unseen:

Once someone has crossed certain lines—the damage is deep, and the risk is real.

🔒 Accountability Must Never Mean Ignoring the Victim’s Reality

If your vision of justice:

• Fails to include the ongoing danger victims face

• Silences the voices of those most affected

• Demands Survivors perform forgiveness for community harmony

…then it is not justice. 
It is just another system that tells victims to endure more in the name of “peace.”

“Some people want peace at any cost. But Survivors have already paid. And we are not here to be sacrificed again.”

Let those violent people come live with you or something and you can be responsible for watching them 24/7. Other than that, let victims have peace and safety. 

🛡️ Final Word

Restorative justice can be powerful. For some. But not if it erases the pain, terror, and trauma that violence leaves behind.
Not if it protects the reputation of the one who caused harm more than it protects the life of the one who lived through it.

Safety is not a side note.
It is the foundation.

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