Eyal Press contends there are entire areas of life we've delegated to "dirty workers"—functions we've declared necessary, but that we strive to keep hidden. In his new book, Press points to the transformation of jails and prisons into the country's largest mental health institutions. He calls the people struggling to offer treatment in those settings "dirty workers"—not because their work isn't noble, but because collectively we've put them in a situation where it's impossible to practice ethical care.
While eviction is a universally stressful event, people with mental health conditions can face unique obstacles with housing retention for reasons related specifically to their disability. This paper provides a review of housing settings and specific risks of eviction for individuals with mental illness before focusing on housing court and the challenges these individuals and court personnel face therein and identifies junctures at which supportive, problem-solving interventions can ensure the necessary community supports and legal representation.
Youth Impact: Bronx is a youth leadership program that offers a restorative approach to issues that young people face. Volunteer members develop and pilot projects to promote community change, lead restorative circles for their peers, and take actions to address the underlying issues causing youth contact with the criminal legal system. Youth Impact offers individual support, mentorship, and educational opportunities to support members as they move towards their individual goals. Watch the video to hear from young people themselves what this program means to them and their community.
Developed with support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Planning a Reentry Program: A Toolkit for Tribal Communities is designed to help tribal justice system practitioners create or enhance reentry programs for American Indians and Alaska Natives returning from jail or prison. It also offers guidance for practitioners who are currently working in a reentry program.
With the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, courts across the country shifted urgently to remote, rather than in-person, operations. It amounted to an unprecedented large-scale experiment. As courts prepare for a post-pandemic future, we looked in depth at both the harms of remote justice and at which practices might be worth continuing, with the overall goal of promoting fairness and equity.
With spikes in gun violence and humanitarian crises in jails, the need for meaningful reform in the justice system is more urgent than ever. On October 28, 2021, Center for Court Innovation Executive Director Courtney Bryan hosted a briefing on the state of justice reform and alternatives to incarceration. Following the briefing, she engaged in conversation with Deron Johnston, the Center’s deputy director of the Center's Community Development and Crime Prevention programs, about innovations in community-led justice.
Supervised Release is as effective as bail at ensuring people make their court appearances, sparing them the documented harms of pretrial detention and allowing them to receive supportive services in their community. This fact sheet of results from the first five years of the program finds its outcomes remain stable, despite its expansion last year to cover a larger, more charge-diverse population.
Justice reforms often exclude people with charges involving violence, even though these are the same people most likely to be incarcerated and to be in the most need of the programs and treatment reform can bring. But a felony court in Manhattan is offering alternatives to incarceration, regardless of charge. Can a treatment-first approach be brought to scale inside of the same system responsible for mass incarceration in the first place?
In this episode of In Practice, Rob Wolf discusses the history, trends, and current innovations in the abusive partner intervention field with Juan Carlos Areán, program director of Children and Youth Programs at Futures Without Violence. They highlight the Abusive Partner Accountability and Engagement Training and Technical Assistance Project, a collaboration between the Center for Court Innovation and Futures Without Violence to help communities enhance their responses to people who cause harm through intimate partner violence.
Rural communities face unique challenges in responding to incidences of domestic violence, due to geographic isolation and a lack of resources, among other factors. Such challenges make it difficult for survivors in rural areas to seek safety. These 10 practices for criminal courts in rural communities offer strategies to protect survivors’ safety and well-being, engage with abusive partners and hold them accountable, and collaborate within the community.
