This spring, Missouri Appleseed’s Survivors’ Justice Project advanced several efforts to recognize the role that abuse and coercion can play in the criminalization of survivors. At the center of our legislative work was H.B. 1872 to establish the Missouri Survivors’ Justice Act. This would have allowed survivors to present evidence of abuse and coercion as a mitigating factor during sentencing to potentially result in reduced prison time.
We worked closely with FWD.us to build support for the legislation and strengthen the bill’s language. Together, we advocated for several important amendments, including defining coercion as a form of abuse, explicitly allowing evidence of past abuse to demonstrate patterns of abuse and intent, and expanding the definition of an abuser to include individuals outside of a survivor’s family. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Children & Families, where Missouri Appleseed Executive Director Mary Quandt and SLU law students Bernt Walker and Amanda Ivie provided testimony in support of the legislation. Although the committee approved the bill, it ultimately stalled before reaching the next stage of the legislative process.
Recognizing that lasting change will require a broad and coordinated effort, Missouri Appleseed is also forming the Survivors’ Justice Reform Coalition. The coalition will bring together advocates, experts, and people with lived experience from across Missouri and the country. We will work together to develop a unified strategy for advancing the Missouri Survivors’ Justice Act and building greater awareness of the ways abuse and coercion can contribute to criminalization.
Our legislative advocacy is complemented by research designed to understand the experiences of criminalized survivors in Missouri. We are conducting a survey of women incarcerated within the Missouri Department of Corrections, developed with input from survivors and the Stanford Criminal Justice Center’s Regilla Project. We are working with Saint Louis University’s Center for Health Law Studies to navigate the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process and ensure that the research is conducted ethically and appropriately given the involvement of an incarcerated population.
Due to the lengthy IRB process, we began a story banking project to ensure that the voices and experiences of survivors remain central to this work. Through these conversations, we have collected firsthand accounts from women whose incarceration is connected to experienced domestic abuse and coercion. Their stories have not only deepened our understanding of the ways abuse and coercion can contribute to criminal acts but have also helped us refine our approach to our research on survivors’ experiences.
Together, these efforts are helping Missouri Appleseed build a stronger foundation for Survivors’ Justice reform. We look forward to sharing what we have learned through our story banking report and video series.
