Josiah Bates of TIME Magazine gives a window into the day-in-the-life of a violence interrupter while spending time with the Center for Court Innovation's Save Our Streets (S.O.S.) teams. Noting the complicated dynamics that are at play in their interactions with both the police and the communities they serve, Rahson Johnson, associate director of community safety at S.O.S. Crown Heights, and Joshua Simon, a violence interrupter with S.O.S. Bed-Stuy, are interviewed and reflect on how to bring resources to help heal the community.
Eric Lach for the New Yorker spends time in the courtroom at arraignment to understand some of the factors fueling the current crisis on Rikers Island. The article cites our research that identified a 2020 spike in judges setting bail and explores the alternatives that judges have to bail--like someone being released on their own recognizance or supervised release.
Monica Morales profiles how teens at the Ingersoll Houses are now giving back and saying "thank you" to the community groups and leaders that helped them with mentorship, programming, and business development. "Gifts from Within" is the name of this initiative that recognized both the Business Playbook and the Mayor's Action Plan for their work through a colorful mural painted by the local teens.
Monica Morales profiles how teens at the Ingersoll Houses are now giving back and saying "thank you" to the community groups and leaders that helped them with mentorship, programming, and business development. "Gifts from Within" is the name of this initiative that recognized both the Business Playbook and the Mayor's Action Plan for their work through a colorful mural painted by the local teens.
The "6a" portion of New York state law allows the release of some incarcerated people, those with less than a one-year sentence, into a work release program. "Inherently, jail sentences are not a public safety reducing practice," Mike Rempel, our director of jail reform says. "They tend to lead people to become homeless, lose their job, create trauma, which increases recidivism afterwards."
Citing our research, Gothamist looks at the role of pretrial decision-making in fueling the crisis on Rikers Island where the jail population has been rising steadily for months. “The research overwhelmingly indicates that releasing people reduces recidivism in the long run, and pre-trial detention increases it,” said Michael Rempel, our director of jail reform.
In their first semester, students from Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE) worked with our Brownsville Community Justice Center to come up with youth-focused economic development on Belmont Avenue. The students learned about the systemic disinvestment in the community and developed a framework for investing in and keeping resources in Brownsville while empowering the community to drive its economic development.
In Priya Parker's essay, the author of "The Art of the Gathering", the Red Hook Community Justice Center is cited as an early example of a place that rethought how meetings work and serves as an inspiration for the current discussion about how workplaces can rethink the when, who, and how of meetings.
Expounding on the many challenges when addressing housing insecurity, this New York Times article features the work of Community First, an initiative of our Midtown Community Court. The goal of Community First is to build trust with homeless populations in order to get them into longer-term housing and support. As program director Lauren Curatolo states, “We want to support you so that you eventually want to have a bed in a space.”
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