Rectify by Lara Bazelon

Author:Lara Bazelon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press

RISE

Judge Leo Sorokin, fifty-six, has spent his professional life working in the criminal justice system. A graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School, Sorokin served as an assistant attorney general, a federal public defender, and a magistrate judge. In 2013, President Barack Obama nominated Sorokin to a seat on the federal district court in Boston; the Senate confirmed him the following year.

Sorokin, a soft-spoken, balding man with pale-blue eyes, has an unassuming manner that gives no hint of his ambition and tenacity. In the fall of 2015, less than eighteen months into his appointment, Sorokin launched a pilot program he had been envisioning for years, and which had no precedent in the federal system. He called it RISE—Repair, Invest, Succeed, Emerge. RISE offered a rare second chance for adult defendants convicted of serious federal crimes to avoid the likelihood of having to go to prison.

Beginning in late October 2015, a committee of judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and probation officers met monthly to screen possible RISE participants; the program could accommodate up to twenty at a time. To be eligible, the defendants had to have a verifiable history of addiction or a life of extreme deprivation. They also had to be out on bail, plead guilty, and agree to have their sentencing hearings postponed for twelve months, during which time they had to get clean, get jobs, go to school, and find a safe, stable place to live.16

But the core non-negotiable component of RISE was attendance at a two-day, sixteen-hour restorative justice workshop. Sitting in a room for eight hours a day, the RISE participants came face-to-face with people who had lost children and close family members to overdoses and shootings. Also in the room were prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, and probation officers, but not in their traditional roles. They, too, participated in the circle exercises, sharing personal experiences, and offering support and encouragement. Mostly, they listened without judgment as the offenders haltingly described their own victimization at the hands of other people. They spoke of their addiction, mental illness, abuse, and poverty.

It had taken months of work for Sorokin to convince skeptics within the criminal justice system that RISE was worth a try. A key ally in that effort was Maria D’Addieco, a federal probation officer with a master’s degree in social work and extensive training as a restorative justice facilitator. She worked with a colleague, Allyson Lorimer Crews, to develop a series of exercises to fill every minute of the two-day workshop. D’Addieco said that the participants have told her that the restorative justice workshops were harder than doing time, where they could “put their game faces on and just get through it without facing up to what they did.” Most, if not all, of the participants had long told themselves that their crimes were “victimless,” as they never saw the direct effects of the drugs and guns they sold.

Sorokin also reached out to Janet Connors, a well-known local activist and sought-after public speaker. Connors, who grew up

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