In Upstate New York, the Center provides training and technical assistance, helps identify gaps in services, and works with communities to find strengths-based solutions to common issues of crime and safety.
Current Programs
Housing, Health, and Safety
Our work in housing addresses resident challenges, identifies gaps in services, and highlights the effects of housing on health, safety, and quality of life of residents.
Syracuse Peacemaking Project
The Syracuse Peacemaking Project provides free, community-based conflict resolution, and organizes place-based community projects led and developed by residents. It operates in a high crime neighborhood in Syracuse, New York. The Peacemaking Center is located at 601 Tully Street and is the first facility of its kind in the country. The Peacemaking Center was designed by Deanna Van Buren, an architect specializing in restorative justice who solicited community input at every step of the design process.
Onondaga Parent Support Program
The Syracuse office piloted New York State’s first problem-solving child support program in 2008. The program links non-custodial parents with needed services to increase child support payments and maintain healthy parent-child relationships. Using the Syracuse program as a model, the Center for Court Innovation helped launch a similar program in Brooklyn in 2010 and the Bronx in 2018.
Patient Navigator Program
The Patient Navigator Program is part of the Women’s Health Education Navigation (W.H.E.N.) network and is generously funded by the March of Dimes and the Health Foundation for Western & Central New York. The program helps justice-involved women connect with health care providers and community resources to better their own health and the health of their children. A licensed social worker works with justice-involved women who are pregnant or parenting young children to identify health care and social service needs, address gaps in services, and link women to “medical homes” where they can receive necessary health care. The Patient Navigator Program creates collaborative partnerships between the justice system, the medical community, and community-based service providers.
The MORE Program
The MORE (Madison County Opportunities for Re-Entry & Employment) Program, launched in early 2022 in partnership between Center for Court Innovation and Community Action Partnership for Madison County, was created to increase economic opportunities for those recently released from jail. The program consists of 10-week group soft skills training sessions while individuals are incarcerated, followed by individualized case management services upon release. Upon release, the individual will work one-on-one with a MORE Employment Coordinator to find a job.
Keep reading for more details about the MORE Program, or learn about how it gives incarcerated individuals hope in the Oneida Dispatch.