Enako
“Despite the challenges that sometimes come up, I'm reminded of why this work matters. Change begins when we are willing to see the humanity in one another and believe that healing is possible.”
We lost loved ones to homicide. We still believe in second chances.
Survivor Action For Equity are the families and friends of murdered victims in California. We are here to say that punishment is not the same as justice.
Who We Are
We've lived through loss.
That's exactly why we're here.
SAFE is a growing community of survivors who have lost loved ones to homicide in California. We have lived through the worst, and arrived at the conclusion that true justice recognizes when people change for the better. We carry our loss with us every single day. And we are asking for a system that makes room for change.
We believe that young people sentenced to life without parole should have the opportunity for review. Not automatic release. Instead, a chance to be seen and judged for their rehabilitation and transformation.
No one cares more about public safety than we do.
We care about safety because we know what's at stake when it fails.
As survivors, we don't want others to experience the kind of loss that we did.
People sometimes ask us how we can support second chances after what we've been through. While our journeys differ, we share a core belief: true justice is focused on healing and accountability, not just punishment. Decades of "tough on crime" policies and extreme sentencing have failed to deter crime or make us safer. When a system is built around punishment, the things that survivors and communities need get deprioritized: crisis support, mental health care, violence prevention, and services for victims and their families. The funding and attention go to keeping people locked up, not to helping survivors heal or preventing the next crime. Therefore, it isn’t surprising that two out of three survivors want the criminal justice system “to focus more on rehabilitating people who commit crimes than punishing them.”
We know that people are capable of transformation, even those who have committed serious crimes, especially when they were young. Research shows that individuals formerly sentenced to life without parole who were later released become deeply invested in their communities as workers, volunteers, and mentors. Most respondents expressed a profound sense of remorse and a strong desire to make amends for the harm they have caused as their primary driving force.
To be clear, we are not advocating for the automatic release of anyone. We are asking that individuals be given the opportunity to earn parole after serving many years. The California Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) enforces a rigorous, multi-layered review process that includes a psychological evaluation, an intensive hearing by trained commissioners, and a final review by the governor. This system ensures that only those who have genuinely transformed are released; as a result, less than one percent of individuals released through this process are convicted of a felony against a person.
A justice system that can recognize transformation is one that serves public safety.