Fighting for Financial Reparation
Our criminal legal system offers no meaningful avenue for repair. Many of us who have caused the greatest interpersonal harm in our communities are now those most passionate about repairing harm and interrupting the cycles of harm in those places. Ultimately, we need to transform the conditions and systems that cultivate and perpetuate violence in the U.S. While we work toward co-creating a more healed future, we need to open avenues of accountability and repair within the systems that exist.
I am asking Maine’s lawmakers to work with systems-impacted social justice and victim/survivor advocates to develop one such avenue: Reparative Trust Accounts.
A Reparative Trust Account (RTA) is a financial account opened by a professional third party in the name of the person(s) harmed in the commission of a crime. RTAs allow the person who caused harm to make voluntary reparation payments to those impacted by their actions. RTAs must be voluntary; otherwise they are just another form of punishment that does nothing to show true remorse or desire for repair.
When I was first arrested, my desire to tell the truth and take responsibility for what I did was robbed from me. I went from being a human being who hurt other human beings to being a Defendant fighting the State. I went from needing to take responsibility for the harm I caused to needing to craft the best story I could based on the evidence against me.
The truth no longer mattered. Trying to make things as right as possible became irrelevant. The people I harmed became weapons of the State that I needed to protect myself from, rather than human beings to whom I now had a lifelong obligation. In total, it took me five years to get back to wanting to tell the truth about what I’d done.
After my sentencing and indoctrination into toxic prison culture, I met Ephriam “E” Bennett, an older Black man from Chicago who would become my best friend, mentor, and spiritual father in Jesus Christ. He helped me break free from the demands of prison culture that compel residents and staff to engage with others through violence and apathy, and helped me begin my journey of healing and returning to a place of truth. (I expound on this journey in Ephriam’s forthcoming memoir, God’s Love Kept Me Fighting, and recently wrote an article through a spiritual lens of trauma healing for the scholarly journal Religions titled, “Trauma, Spirituality, and Healing: A Journey through the Lens of an Incarcerated Person”).
When I came to understand that a mixture of unprocessed trauma, societal pressure, spiritual confusion and terrible decision-making had driven me to engage in uncharacteristic violence (never before and never since have I harmed a person with a weapon), I also became aware of my obligation to tell the truth of both what I did and why I did it. And, more than telling the truth and genuinely apologizing for what I did (being sorry), I wanted to do sorry: to work to repair what harm I could.
This is where I ran into barriers. After supporting me through a Victim Impact Dialogue, Maine’s Department of Corrections’ (DOC) Victim Services was prevented from supporting me in creating an RTA. Maine law doesn’t allow for what I’d proposed. So I filed a motion in court and, at the end of March, with the blessing of one of the people I harmed in the crime that brought me to prison, I was able to set a legal precedent for the future creation of an RTA. I cannot undo what I did, nor ever fully right that wrong. What I can do is work each day to make things as right as possible (a foundational aspect of restorative justice).
The current system blocks this kind of repair. The DOC has been making strides in supporting remote work opportunities for qualified residents, and many of us want to use that pay to do some good in this world — starting with the persons we harmed, if that is welcomed by them. However, we need a Maine law that enables the DOC to make policy allowing the creation of RTAs.
I have conceptual language for a bill prepared that I’m eager to share with lawmakers. This language includes a requirement for the victim’s consent or request. My hope is that even though the Legislature’s most recent session is over, Maine lawmakers will accept this invitation to write future reparative legislation that helps care for the needs of victims/survivors. Please share this column with your local state representative and senator and ask them to take action!
Leo Hylton is a PhD student at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, currently incarcerated at Maine State Prison. His education and work are focused on Social Justice Advocacy and Activism, with a vision toward an abolitionist future. You can reach him at: Leo Hylton #70199, 807 Cushing Rd., Warren, ME 04864, or leoshininglightonhumanity@gmail.com.
