California study is asking crime survivors what we need

When I was 12 years old, my sister was kidnapped from our bedroom and murdered. In the aftermath, I watched lawmakers use grieving families — ours included — to sell the public on legislative policies that had already been written. 

My sister’s name, Polly Klaas, became synonymous with fear. And California’s Three Strikes law swept through the legislature.

Here’s what legislators weren’t doing: asking what would help us heal, what would make us feel safer, or what kind of system we actually wanted. 

They were looking for pain they could weaponize. And it worked. Politicians simply assumed they knew what victims wanted, and they used our grief to push an agenda that had little to do with actual safety or healing.

I’ve spent years watching how survivor voices get co-opted — how our pain becomes a tool for policies that don’t serve us. Polly’s story became shorthand for “tough on crime,” and was used to justify mass incarceration, even though research shows victims overwhelmingly prefer rehabilitation and community investment over longer prison sentences. 

The gap between what we’re told victims want and what we actually need has felt impossible to close. That’s why I’m so moved by what’s happening right now in California.

For the first time, researchers at the University of San Francisco are surveying crime victims, survivors and their family members who have participated in parole hearings for someone who harmed them or their loved one. 

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. For generations, legislators have claimed to speak for victims while passing laws without ever asking us what we actually think. 

What would have made a difference

This survey flips that script. It was co-designed with victims and survivors over several months, ensuring that the questions reflect our real concerns — not what policymakers assume we care about. 

It asks about what support we received (or didn’t), how we were treated by the system, what resources would have made a difference and what reforms we believe would help others walking this difficult path.

It matters enormously that victims and survivors are leading this process, not as symbolic voices brought in after decisions are made, but as co-creators. 

The survey is open through November 30th. The findings will be shared with policymakers, advocates and community leaders to ensure victim and survivor voices guide future reforms. 

I know firsthand how rare this is. When Polly died in 1993, grief counselors and victim advocates would have helped our family immensely — but those services barely existed. 

Instead, we got media scrutiny and political theater. Her story was used to justify laws that primarily incarcerated people of color for low-level crimes — the very opposite of the justice and safety those laws promised. 

If someone had asked us what we needed then, we would have said, time to grieve, mental health support and a system that recognized us as victims in need of care, not props for a political agenda.

Our experience matters — not as a talking point — but as truth that can shape what comes next.

I’ve learned through my own healing journey that real change happens through connection, understanding, and genuine accountability — not through punishment, shame, or control. 

The same is true for policy. When we create laws based on what victims and survivors experience and need, rather than on fear or political calculation, we build systems that serve healing and safety instead of systems that perpetuate harm.

For so long, I’ve carried the weight of knowing that my sister’s story was used to build systems that don’t work — that harm communities, that don’t make us safer and that don’t reflect what victims actually need. 

This survey represents something different: a chance to build policy grounded in truth rather than fear, in healing rather than retribution, in the voices of those who’ve lived through violence rather than those who exploit it.

That feels like hope. And right now, we could all use a little more of that.