The Bronx Community Justice Center works to create a safer, more equitable Bronx through community-driven public safety initiatives, youth opportunity, and economic mobility efforts focused in the South Bronx. Our vision is to support the South Bronx community to become a safe and thriving place where local ownership, community-led investment, and youth opportunity can flourish. The Bronx Community Justice Center works toward this vision by focusing on community safety, restorative practices, and youth and economic development.
Many schools have adopted a form of restorative justice, but there are few rigorous evaluations of its effects. Our study of an ambitious project in a handful of New York City schools returned a mixed result: widespread perceptions of an improved school climate, but little movement in our primary metric—the use of suspensions. Should future researchers prioritize outcomes more aligned with restorative justice's overall goals?
The Staten Island Justice Center (SIJC) offers an array of programming for both youth and adults in Staten Island, focusing on engaging those with current or past justice involvement. The Justice Center provides meaningful early diversion, supervised release for people awaiting trial, and alternative sentencing options. In addition, the Justice Center offers a range of programs for local youth and families on Staten Island with a goal to keep young people in school and out of the criminal legal system, while inspiring community safety and healing.
Youth Impact: Bronx is a youth leadership program that offers a restorative approach to issues that young people face. Volunteer members develop and pilot projects to promote community change, lead restorative circles for their peers, and take actions to address the underlying issues causing youth contact with the criminal legal system.
Hurt people hurt people. That's not an excuse for harm, but it fuels much of the criminal justice system. At 19, Marlon Peterson was the unarmed lookout on a robbery where two people were killed. Peterson spent a decade behind bars. He writes about those years, and the childhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that preceded them, in his new memoir. I made my own choices, Peterson says, “but I also did not choose to experience the type of things I experienced.”
Our Queens Community Justice Center recently moved to a new location and is planning to open a new office in the Rockaways. The Justice Center is dedicated to supporting people both in and outside the justice system, providing a range of services and opportunities for civic engagement for people of all ages. In this video, see the new space and hear our staff share how expanding services will build a stronger community for the residents of Queens.
This guide provides lessons learned from the Center’s Restorative Justice in Schools Project. Over the course of three years, our team worked in five high schools implementing restorative practices. The theory of change was simple: strong relationships create safer and healthier school environments. The aim of the guide is to assist educators, students, and community members in shifting their schools away from punitive approaches and towards a more restorative environment, and to lay the foundation for the entire school community to build positive connections.
The Harlem Community Justice Center is a neighborhood-based community court committed to bridging the gap between the court and community to achieve fairness and systematic equity in housing, community health, and access to justice. We believe the community should have a voice in addressing its problems and defining justice, we and seek to empower communities to transform the systems that serve them.
This fact sheet describes the Queens Community Justice Center (formerly the Queens Youth Justice Center), a program of the Center for Court Innovation, which works with people both in and outside the justice system, providing a range of supportive services and opportunities for civic engagement for people of all ages.
Save Our Streets (S.O.S.) Bronx is part of a network of community-based efforts throughout New York City to end gun violence. S.O.S. was the first among the network to adapt the Cure Violence model to New York. S.O.S. uses public health strategies to respond to incidents and prevent violence before it starts. S.O.S. works closely with local organizations, neighborhood churches and pastors, community residents, and the individuals considered most likely to commit a shooting. Independent evaluators credit S.O.S.
