To help self-represented victims of domestic violence, many family courts have established court-based programs and partnerships that provide tailored civil legal assistance to victims. This document, based on the experience of more than a dozen representative courts, outlines important principles that have made these programs and partnerships effective.
Our year-long study of young New Yorkers in areas with high rates of gun violence found widespread experiences of violence and the fear of police are primary motivations for carrying a gun. The findings suggest public safety efforts centered on law enforcement are failing to make these young people feel safer. The report concludes with concrete recommendations that account for the violence—both interpersonal and systemic—that shapes their daily lives.
Punishments for violating the terms of probation are a major driver of prison and jail populations across the country. Calls for meaningful reform are growing. This study examines the impact of New York City’s early efforts to shift to a more client-centered approach to probation, including improved case management and establishing neighborhood-oriented probation offices.
The arts make us confident, hopeful, and resilient. Based on decades of research and experience, we know that investing in the arts can help us achieve justice. Watch a conversation between artists, government, and community-based organizations on how investing in the arts allows communities to thrive.
An increasing number of courts are finding that the addition of a new staff role—the "resource coordinator"—enables judges and lawyers to connect defendants to the services they need to address underlying issues driving re-offending. This publication highlights four examples from around the nation.
The Center for Court Innovation’s "Taking Action" series aims to inform justice practitioners about innovations in the field and support their efforts to replicate innovative practices locally.
Restorative justice is about repairing harm. But for Black Americans, what is there to be restored to? This special episode of New Thinking features a roundtable with eight members of our Restorative Justice in Schools team. They spent three years embedded in five Brooklyn high schools—all five schools are overwhelmingly Black, and all five had some of the highest suspension rates in New York City.
This article, which appeared in the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution, seeks to address a gap in the fierce debate over pretrial risk assessment: the role of the defender. The authors contend defense attorneys can challenge the data science undergirding risk assessments and use their implementation as a lever for renegotiating the “going rates"—the default rules that expedite the disposition of cases and drive plea-bargaining in a given jurisdiction.
Spurred by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans at the hands of police, demands are increasing for money to be redirected from police budgets. No single strategy can achieve meaningful change; through experience and research, we have identified a number of sustainable community-driven solutions that can limit the role of police, while building safe and strong neighborhoods.
Adam Foss wants to transform the justice system—from within. A former Boston prosecutor who rose to prominence on a TED Talk criticizing his colleagues for using their power more often to jail than to help people, Foss is the executive director of Prosecutor Impact. It trains prosecutors across the country in line with Foss's vision for the profession. But as protests continue against the killing of African Americans by police, other voices are advocating far more radical strategies.
In the U.S., six to seven and a half million people are victims of stalking every year. Nearly one in six women and one in 17 men have experienced stalking victimization at some point in their lifetimes. In this episode of In Practice, Rob Wolf discusses stalking in the context of domestic violence and intimate partner violence with national expert Jennifer Landhuis, director of the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center (SPARC). They talk about what stalking is, why it's so dangerous, and what's being done among advocates and legal practitioners to address it.
