incident-response-policy.md

Spec Code of Conduct Incident Response Policy

This policy is a "living" document, and subject to refinement and expansion in the future.

This document describes how to respond to reports of harassment, as outlined in the Spec Code of Conduct.

Receiving Harassment Reports

If someone reports harassment to a Spec host, their report will act as a written account of what happened. This should be kept confidential to as small a group as reasonably possible.

If a Spec host receives a verbal report, they should themselves write down what they were told as soon as they can, in case they don't get anything better. When possible, verbal reports are usually better conducted in a quiet/private place, for the safety and comfort of the reporter. This also decreases the chances for someone to overhear sensitive information.

If the following information is not volunteered in the written or verbal report, ask for it/include it, but do not pressure the reporter to provide it:

• Identifying information of the participant doing the harassing
• The behavior that was in violation
• The approximate time of the behavior (if different than the time the report was made)
• The circumstances surrounding the incident
• Other people involved in the incident

Initial Response to Harassment Reports

Threats to Physical Well-being

Most harassment complaints aren't of this nature, but if there is a report that someone has committed or is threatening violence towards a community member, or other safety issues:

• If there is any general threat to community members or the safety of anyone involved in the community is in doubt, summon security or police.
• offer the victim a private place to sit
• ask "is there a friend or trusted person who you would like to be with you?" (if so, arrange for someone to fetch this person)
• ask them "how can I help?"
• provide them with a list of emergency contacts if they need help later

Law Enforcement

If everyone is presently physically safe, involve law enforcement or security only at a victim's request.

In many cases, reporting harassment to law enforcement is very unpleasant and may result in further harassment. Forcing victims to go to law enforcement will reduce reports of harassment (but not actual harassment). For more information, see Why Didn't You Report It?

Reports of Harassment That Were Widely Witnessed

These include things like harassing content in conference talks, or harassment that took place in a crowded space.

Simply say "Thanks, this sounds like a breach of our anti-harassment policy. I am going to convene a meeting of a small group of people and figure out what our response will be."

Reports of More Private Harassment

Offer the reporter/victim a chance to decide if any further action is taken: "OK, this sounds like a breach of our anti-harassment policy. If you're OK with it I am going to convene a meeting of a small group of people and figure out what our response will be." Pause, and see if they say they do not want this. Otherwise, go ahead.

Things not to do:

• Do not overtly invite them to withdraw the complaint or mention that withdrawal is OK: this suggests that you want them to do so, and is therefore coercive. "If you're OK with it [pursuing the complaint]" suggests that you are by default pursuing it and is not coercive.
• Do not ask for their advice on how to deal with the complaint: this is the responsibility of the Spec hosts
• Do not offer them input into penalties: this is the responsibility of the Spec hosts
• Do not share details of the people involved or incident without specific permission from the victim. This includes sharing with other Spec hosts.

Staff Action in Response to Harassment Reports

You should aim to take action as soon as reasonably possible. A response within the next half-day is the ideal timeframe.

Meeting

Available staff should meet as soon as possible after a report to discuss:

• what happened?
• are we doing anything about it?
• who is doing those things?
• when are they doing them?

Neither the complainant nor the alleged harasser should attend. If the event was very widely witnessed, such as a harassing talk, that may be an exception to this guideline. People with a conflict of interest should exclude themselves or if necessary be excluded by others.

Communicate With the Alleged Harasser About the Complaint

As soon as possible, either before or during the above meeting, let the alleged harasser know that there is a complaint about them, let them tell someone their side of the story and that person takes it into the meeting.

Communicate With the Harasser About the Response

As soon as possible after that meeting, let the harasser know what action is being taken. Give them a place to appeal to if there is one, but in the meantime the action stands. "If you'd like to discuss this further, please contact XYZ, but in the meantime, you must "

Possible Sanctions

The guiding principle of Spec hosts should be the safety of our community members from harassment. Spec hosts should evaluate sanctions in light of whether they provide the safety needed. You and your event are the only people who can judge appropriate sanctions in your community based on the nature of the incident and the responses of the people involved, but some possibilities are:

• warning the harasser to cease their behaviour and that any further reports will result in sanctions
• requiring that the harasser avoid any interaction with, and physical proximity to, their victim for the remainder of the event
• ending a talk that violates the policy early
• not publishing the video or slides of a talk that violated the policy
• not allowing a speaker who violated the policy to give (further) talks at the event
• immediately ending any event volunteer responsibilities and privileges the harasser holds
• requiring that the harasser not volunteer for future events your organization runs (either indefinitely or for a certain time period)
• requiring that the harasser refund any travel grants and similar they received (this would need to be a condition of the grant at the time of being awarded)
• requiring that the harasser immediately leave the event and not return
• banning the harasser from future events (either indefinitely or for a certain time period)
• removing a harasser from membership of relevant organizations

Employer Reports

If someone harassed someone else while in an official employee capacity, such as while working as paid event staff, while giving a talk about their employer's product, while staffing a sponsor booth, while wearing their employer's branded merchandise, while attempting to recruit someone for a job, or while claiming to represent their employer's views, it may be appropriate to provide a short report of their conduct to their employer.

Don't Require or Encourage Apologies

We do not suggest asking for an apology to the victim. You have no responsibility to enforce friendship, reconciliation, or anything beyond lack of harassment between any two given attendees, and in fact doing so can contribute to someone's lack of safety at your event.

Forcing a victim of harassment to acknowledge an apology from their harasser forces further contact with their harasser. It also creates a social expectation that they will accept the apology, forgive their harasser, and return their social connection to its previous status. A person who has been harassed will often prefer to ignore or avoid their harasser entirely. Bringing them together with a third party mediator and other attempts to "repair" the situation which require further interaction between them should likewise be avoided.

If the harasser offers to apologize to the victim (especially in person), we suggest strongly discouraging it. If a staff member relays an apology to the victim, it should be brief and not require a response. ("X apologizes and agrees to have no further contact with you" is brief. "X is very sorry that their attempts to woo you were not received in the manner that was intended and will try to do better next time, they're really really sorry and hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive them" is emphatically not.)

If the harasser attempts to press an apology on someone who would clearly prefer to avoid them, or attempts to recruit others to relay messages on their behalf, this may constitute continued harassment.

Data Retention

Each incident reports and responses should be stored indefinitely in the private zebrafishlabs/code-of-conduct-reports repository.

Communicating With the Community

Principles

Your community may need to see the policy enforced because:

• you want to be transparent to your community and not have secret policies and sanctions that you aren't accountable for
• the actions of the harasser, or reports of multiple harassment, show that your policy may not be well understood
• you wish to reassure people that you are serious about anti-harassment

Level of Detail

When discussing the incident with others, it is good to keep the individuals anonymous, generally. An exception may be if the harasser is very central to the community, such as a Spec host. However, it is useful to:

• offer some idea of the nature of the incident eg "a sexual slide was shown in a talk" or "an attendee physically threatened another attendee" or "an attendee repeatedly harassed another attendee despite multiple requests to cease" or whatever.
• briefly mention the sanction
• (briefly! neutrally!) convey any apologies from the harasser, especially if they were backed by actions, for example "the [attendee/speaker/staffer] has agreed that their actions were inappropriate and has voluntarily left the conference"

This helps the community understand the reality of the policy: how and when it gets enforced.

Feedback

The community should be offered the chance to give feedback on the policy and actions. When discussing the incident, always offer an avenue for feedback: this could be verbally, or via Slack, email, etc. One mechanism is usually fine if it's accessible to everyone. (Verbally in person is not accessible to everyone.)

You will probably prefer that the feedback be private between an individual attendee and the Spec hosts: discussions of harassment incidents on geeky public mailing lists and similar often end up in lengthy (and sometimes harassing!) disputes about the philosophical validity of the notion of harassment.

Informing the Community

Depending on the report and how public the incident was, it may be appropriate to make a short announcement about it, something like:

"[thing] happened. This was a violation of our policy. We apologise for this. We have taken [action]. This is a good time for all attendees to review our policy at [location]. If anyone would like to discuss this further they can [contact us somehow]."

Evaluation

After we have had a chance to observe how the code of conduct works in real-world situations, we may wish to change the policy to better address them. Did anything unforeseen happen that there should be a rule about? Sometimes an unacceptable behavior does not warrant a whole new rule, but should be listed as a specific example of unacceptable behavior under an existing rule.