Diversion News Archive

Legislation like the recent New York State justice reforms is a powerful tool, but it's no magic bullet. As former New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and our director, Greg Berman, argue in Gotham Gazette, lasting change also requires the slow grind of transforming practice and culture.

With significant reforms aimed at reducing the harms of the justice system passed in New York State, Adam Mansky, our director of criminal justice, outlines three of our programs already in place that also represent a positive vision of what justice can look like.

We all know what's wrong with the criminal justice system (fairness and humanity are often in short supply). Drawing from our work, our director, Greg Berman, describes some community-based solutions—like violence interruption, trauma-informed care for the justice-involved, and social workers rather than bail or detention pretrial—that are already making a difference.

We all want safe neighborhoods, argues our Greg Berman in Governing, but the way we treat many people arrested for low-level offenses does more harm than good. Berman offers New York City as a potential model for other jurisdictions looking to reform low-level justice.

The Vera Institute of Justice named our book, Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Incarceration, and two of our New Thinking podcast episodes—one from its Prosecutor Power series, and an audio portrait of our program working with young men of color—to its Best of 2018 justice reform list.

Writing in USA Today, former New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman argues that incarceration isn't appropriate for everyone, including some violent offenders, and he cites our Brooklyn Mental Health Court as a model alternative.

New Jersey Monthly profiles Judge Victoria Pratt and her work developing a problem-solving approach to low-level cases at our Newark Community Solutions.

Our director, Greg Berman, reviews two new books he says offer "a healthy corrective to the pessimistic narratives about criminal justice."

From our partner court in Olympia, Washington, to our Midtown Community Court in Manhattan, US News & World Report profiles the many advances in community justice across the country, calling the Center for Court Innovation the "nonprofit engine of the community court movement."

Sam Roberts includes our book, Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration, in his fall reading roundup.