We invest in young people as leaders within their communities and beyond and support them to reach their self-defined goals.
The Center for Justice Innovation works with youth to create paths to economic mobility, build community safety, and address the inequities and racist policies in the criminal legal system that have disproportionately harmed and criminalized BIPOC youth.
Transformative relationships among staff, young people, and the community are the foundation of the Center’s model. We invest in young people as leaders within their communities and beyond and support them to reach their self-defined goals.
Initiatives
Youth Impact
Youth can be transformative leaders, addressing inequity in their communities and the factors that lead to youth involvement in the criminal legal system.
Identity-Based Initiatives
We provide affirming space for young people to explore their identities, build community, pursue self-care, and access healing spaces with an intersectional lens.
Youth Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise
Social enterprise and entrepreneurship programs nurture young people’s skills to develop career pipelines and start businesses, solve local problems, and support economic development.
Youth-led Placemaking
Youth-led placemaking forges strong connections between individuals and their environments to create public spaces that foster community well-being.
Youth Arts
Art engages young people to build creativity, skills, and create networking opportunities to support educational and career trajectories.
Youth Action Institute
The Youth Action Institute is a public policy research fellowship that supports young New Yorkers in investigating and testing solutions to the issues and policies that affect their lives
The Youth Action Institute hosted a virtual panel where they shared their experiences and justice work, and talked about how we can positively impact and center the needs of queer and trans youth.
The Bronx Community Justice Center works to create a safer, more equitable Bronx through community-driven public safety initiatives, youth opportunity, and economic mobility efforts focused in the South Bronx. Our vision is to support the South Bronx community to become a safe and thriving place where local ownership, community-led investment, and youth opportunity can flourish. The Bronx Community Justice Center works toward this vision by focusing on community safety, restorative practices, and youth and economic development.
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.
In this guest feature, young researchers with our Youth Action Institute take a close look at New York City's school policies regarding queer and trans youth, and offer up their bold vision for the future of gender education.
“True healing really requires vulnerability, which is next to impossible in situations of fear or intimidation.” Our researchers Basaime Spate and Rachel Swaner join Sheilah Kast about the findings in our youth gun-carrying report, adding to the timely discussion on gun violence in Baltimore. The relationships between fear, vulnerability, and the security of street networks are key themes on this episode of On the Record.
A new blueprint from the Mayor’s Office outlines a holistic, citywide strategy to curb gun violence in New York, one that works to address some of the underlying social factors—like education and economic opportunity—behind the crisis. This op-ed from the New York Daily News cites our recent study’s finding that young people in Brooklyn overwhelmingly carry guns for protection, making the case for more community investment and less reliance on law enforcement in the struggle to reduce gun violence.