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?"
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.
The movement to elect reform-minded prosecutors has been around long enough and scored enough victories that progressive D.A.s now have their own support network: Fair and Just Prosecution. Miriam Krinsky, its executive director, explains why she thinks "starry-eyed idealists" who want to transform the justice system need to get the message that "the biggest difference they can make is to go and work in a prosecutor's office."
Peacemaking is a traditional Native American approach to justice focused on healing and community restoration, rather than punishment. The Near Westside Peacemaking Project brings this practice to one of Syracuse, New York’s most distressed neighborhoods, offering community members a unique approach to addressing an array of community problems. This report describes the 24-month planning period and the first two years of program implementation, including program structure, goals, caseload, and feedback from participants.
Through conversations with prosecutors, reformers, and public defenders, our New Thinking podcast has been examining the ideas, victories, and challenges of the movement to educate the public about the power of prosecutors and to elect "progressive" district attorneys promising to overhaul the justice systems they're inheriting.
Explore the 25-year history of Midtown Community Court as the nation’s first community court, its impact on the justice landscape, and its unique community partnerships, including an emphasis on using arts programming as an alternative to incarceration.
This report provides the results of a regular community survey intended to give voice to the concerns of the people who live and work in the Red Hook neighborhood in southwest Brooklyn, the home of our Red Hook Community Justice Center. This 2016 survey measured citizen perceptions of neighborhood quality of life, public safety, and satisfaction with local criminal justice agencies.
This collection of photographs tells the story of the Midtown Community Court, looking at its first 25 years of operation and tracing its development from groundbreaking experiment to a core component of the New York City criminal justice landscape.
Jill Harris says she's "shocked to find myself working for a D.A." A long-time advocate for criminal justice reform, Harris, now the head of the Brooklyn D.A.'s Justice 2020 reform initiative, offers her take on the role of the prosecutor in the third installment of our series on the debate over prosecutor power.
Highlights from a public screening and panel discussion of Bill Moyers's 'Rikers: An American Jail,' moderated by New Thinking host, Matt Watkins. Commenting on the film and the future of criminal justice reform are Tina Luongo of the Legal Aid Society, Jill Harris of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, and two of the people formerly held on Rikers featured in the film: Barry Campbell of the Fortune Society, and Johnny Perez of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.
