Upstate New York

Recent Highlights

• Providing peacemaking services to over 75 residents in the Near Westside during the first year of operations. 
• Collecting $55,425.38 in child support and helping 165 non-custodial parents find employment through the Parent Support Program, which is funded by Onondaga County.
• Providing Patient Navigator services to 75 justice-involved women who were pregnant or parenting young children with support from the March of Dimes.
• Presenting a CLE training on Peacemaking in State Courts to the New York State Dispute Resolution Association. 
• Receiving funding from the March of Dimes to pilot a new Patient Navigator Program in Buffalo.

Current programs

Near Westside Peacemaking Project
The Near Westside Peacemaking Project provides free, community-based conflict resolution, and organizes place-based community projects led and developed by residents. It operates in a high crime neighborhood in Syracuse, New York. The Peacemaking Center is located at 601 Tully Street and is the first facility of its kind in the country. The Center was designed by Deanna Van Buren, an architect specializing in restorative justice who solicited community input at every step of the design process. 

Onondaga Parent Support Program
The Syracuse office piloted New York State’s first problem-solving child support program in 2008. The program links non-custodial parents with needed services to increase child support payments and maintain healthy parent-child relationships. Using the Syracuse program as a model, the Center for Court Innovation helped launch a similar program in Brooklyn in 2010 and the Bronx in 2018.

Patient Navigator Program 
The Patient Navigator Program is part of the Women’s Health Education Navigation (W.H.E.N.) network and is generously funded by the March of Dimes and the Health Foundation for Western & Central New York. The program helps justice-involved women connect with health care providers and community resources to better their own health and the health of their children.  A licensed social worker works with justice-involved women who are pregnant or parenting young children to identify health care and social service needs, address gaps in services, and link women to “medical homes” where they can receive necessary health care. The Patient Navigator Program creates collaborative partnerships between the justice system, the medical community, and community-based service providers. 

Adolescent Diversion Part 
The Syracuse office provides technical assistance and planning to the Syracuse Adolescent Diversion Part, which will help adolescent offenders avoid the legal and collateral consequences associated with a criminal conviction and link them with the assistance they need to pursue law-abiding, productive futures. Click here for more information.

Site Visits, Trainings, and Roundtables
The Syracuse office promotes justice system reform by hosting site visits to innovative courts and community-based projects in Upstate New York. Justice system professionals from federal, state, and tribal systems have visited the Syracuse office to observe these projects in action. In addition, the Syracuse office coordinates a variety of training events and roundtable discussions around justice system innovation.

Past programs

• Developing a drug court English as a Second Language Program.
• Providing employment services to drug court clients.
• Hosting a SAMHSA Trauma Informed Care Train-the-Trainers workshop for court personnel, probation staff and law enforcement.
• Hosting roundtable discussions with state court judges regarding the Rockefeller Drug Reforms.
• Providing Continuing Legal Education to bar associations and court personnel around problem-solving justice and Center demonstration projects.

For more information about the Syracuse office, contact Sarah Reckess, the office’s director, at (315) 266-4332 or sreckess@nycourts.gov.