Most victims of crime have committed crime themselves, according to a new report, and criminal justice system often contributes to the problems it sets out to solve.

“Whether it is intended or not, we have a system that is unresponsive to the realities of the people most likely to experience the harms that the system is putatively in place to mitigate and respond to,” said Leah Nelson, research director at Alabama Appleseed, a nonprofit policy group focused on poverty and criminal justice.

For its report, Appleseed surveyed 401 Alabamians, between the ages of 16 and 95, who are from communities that experience high levels of violence. The report found that many of the people had committed crimes been the victims of crimes. But the majority of those victimized reported that they did not feel comfortable calling the police for help due to fear retaliation and getting arrested. Only 46 percent said they felt safer after the person who harmed them was sent to prison.

Nelson said the state can start to address those issues by replicating the model Alabama is already using to address substance use sending people who’ve overcome addition to help people suffering from it navigate out of trouble.

The state invests little in financial support for families after homicides, the report found, especially for children who lose parents. It also found a lack of funding for people to re-enter society after they leave prison.

In 2021 lawmakers decided to spend 1.3 billion dollars on two new prisons. The cost of those prisons has gone up since then, with one prison in Elmore County now expected to cost nearly $1 billion, the report said.

“The system is really focused on punishing a person who did the harm, and not focused on the needs of the person who experienced it,” said Nelson.

The majority of survey participants, 62 percent, reported that they had seen someone stabbed, attacked or robbed. And while 70 percent said they had been convicted of crime themselves, 59 percent reported that they had been to jail or prison. More than half said a family member died in a homicide, 56 percent reported being sexually assaulted and 45 percent had been shot at.

“Alabama Appleseed has come to understand that “victims” and “offenders” are not two siloed categories of people who only interact at the moment when one of them harms the other,” the report stated, but Alabama’s response to crime is focused on punishment rather than ending a cycle of violence and poverty.

Most of the people surveyed were women, 57 percent, and Black, 63 percent. LGBTQ+ people made up 15 percent of the survey respondents. Most were low-income with more than half earning less than $15,000 a year. Many had a history of substance use and most reported a history of childhood trauma.

To be inclusive of a range of perspectives, the survey group included formerly incarcerated people, survivors of domestic violence, people in treatment for substance use disorder and noncitizens.

“If we had some type of peer specialist in place, people who understand exactly what that person is going through, and just help them connect with resources, I think that would make a big difference,” said Nelson.

Nelson said she believes the state needs to spend time listening to Alabamians who have been the victims of violent crime to start to come up with the best solutions to meet their needs.

“What I kept hearing from people basically is they just don’t feel heard. There’s not a place for them to go.”