Can art transform the criminal justice system? On this special edition of New Thinking, host Matt Watkins sits down with two New York City artists on the rise—Derek Fordjour and Shaun Leonardo—who both work with our Project Reset to provide an arts-based alternative to court and a criminal record for people arrested on a low-level charge. With the program set to expand city-wide, the three discuss art's potential to expose and contain a racialized criminal justice system.
An evaluation of the Brooklyn Young Adult Court—a misdemeanor court for 16- to 24-year-olds—found fewer convictions and less use of jail for participants, with no discernible risk to public safety. The court provides social services and alternatives to traditional prosecution, partly in response to research showing young people have markedly different brain development from older adults. The report ends with recommendations for other jurisdictions looking to adopt a new approach to young adult justice.
With so much focus on keeping people out of jail and prison, what about work to improve life for the more than two million people already there? One group beginning to mobilize on the issue is prosecutors. Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine explain the “bright line” they see running from the overt racial control in America’s past to the disparities and dehumanizing practices behind bars today.
As part of a conference sponsored by the Center for Court Innovation and the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, we asked justice system leaders and experts "What has been the biggest change in the New York City criminal justice system over the last five years?"
Dating violence among teens presents unique challenges to fashioning effective juvenile justice-system interventions. This report captures conversation from a cross-disciplinary roundtable exploring what diversion means for this population and where—and whether—it should occur. Participants identified the unique needs of youth, possible means of intervention, and recommendations for further exploration.
Bronx Community Solutions is a team of social service providers, compliance monitors, community service supervisors, and others who seek to improve the quality of justice in the Bronx. This includes offering judges and attorneys meaningful alternatives to bail, fines, jail sentences, and court appearances.
Project Reset seeks to provide a more proportionate and meaningful response to low-level offending by offering individuals with no prior arrests the opportunity to avoid prosecution and the collateral consequences of justice-involvement. This report evaluates the program pilot for 16- and 17-year-olds in Manhattan. Results point to positive impacts overall: participants had fewer new arrests and convictions and spent longer periods without experiencing a new arrest. Nearly all of the participants reported they would recommend the program to others.
How effective is therapy or treatment when it's used instead of incarceration, and what are the challenges to conducting it inside the coercive context of the criminal justice system? New Thinking host Matt Watkins is joined by clinical psychologist Jacob Ham who works with justice-involved young people affected by trauma, and John Jay College's Deborah Koetzle who evaluates programs aiming to help participants rebuild lives outside of the justice system.
The goal of Neighbors in Action is to build safer and healthier communities for all. Through our programming in the Brooklyn, New York, neighborhoods of Crown
Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant, we work to create communities where violence is neither needed nor wanted, neighbors have increased autonomy and decision-making capabilities, and the people who want to lead have the skills to do so.
This study maps the current landscape of police-led pretrial diversion programs. It presents the results from a survey on diversion given to a representative sample of law enforcement agencies nationwide along with case studies of eight promising police-led programs, including programs targeting mentally-ill individuals, juveniles, and low-level or first-time adult defendants. Funded by the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office of the Department of Justice, this report explores why these programs were created, how they work, and where they differ.
