Brownsville Community Justice Center

BCJC

The Brownsville Community Justice Center works to reduce crime and incarceration, and strengthen community trust in justice in central Brooklyn.

The Brownsville Community Justice Center is a multi-faceted initiative that seeks to prevent crime by investing in local youth and improving the physical landscape of the neighborhood. The Justice Center also seeks to forge better responses after crime occurs, offering meaningful alternatives to incarceration.

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Highlights

  • Legal Hand

    Legal Hand empowers community residents to support their neighbors with the legal information they need.

  • Project Reset

    Project Reset is a diversion program offering a new response to a low-level arrest that is proportionate, effective, and restorative.

  • Youth Court

    Youth courts train teenagers to handle real-life cases involving their peers, offering a restorative response to misbehavior.

  • Housing Resource Centers

    Through housing, financial, and legal assistance, we help tenants navigate housing court to resolve critical repairs and prevent evictions.

Photo Gallery

Brownsville Be on Belmont Festival
Be on Belmont

The Be On Belmont festival celebrates a community-led revitalization of a historic commercial corridor. The transformation was recognized with an Excellence Award from the Center for Active Design.

Brownsville Community Justice Center as Media Center
Community Engagement Through Tech

At an NYC Media Lab panel, John Bryant explains the Justice Center's use of in-house designed technology to solve community problems and engage young people. You can also listen to a profile of the tech lab from WNYC.

The Brownsville Photography Program
A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

The Justice Center's Brownsville Photography Program allows students to explore the power of visual imagery under the tutelage of professional photographers.

Virtual Brownsville Community Justice Center
"Virtual" Brownsville

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams gets an introduction to a new augmented reality app created by a team of young coders at the Justice Center.

Publications & Digital Media

  • Publication

    Community Justice Today: Values, Guiding Principles, and Models

    The idea of community justice encompasses a diverse and growing range of evidence-based initiatives which seek to reduce crime by strengthening communities and redressing longstanding inequities. In recognition of the ways in which the approach has evolved over the years, this publication presents a new set of guiding principles of community justice and offers inventive models for putting them into practice, both inside and outside of the courtroom.

    Community Justice
  • Publication

    They Can't Quit Recidivism: A New Vision for Evaluating Community Safety Work

    Community safety is multidimensional. Yet efforts to build community safety outside of the criminal legal system are often evaluated only using data generated by that same system. This means effective strategies of crime and violence prevention can be overlooked by policymakers and funders. We make an urgent case for a new paradigm.

    Evidence-Based Practices, Placemaking, Reducing Violence
  • Video

    Changemakers in Action: Yvette Rouget

    “I got you.” Three little, but powerful, words that mean the world to the community residents that Yvette Rouget serves in her role as program manager at our Housing Resource Center at Brownsville Community Justice Center. As someone who also lives in the community in which she works, she takes her job and role as a good neighbor seriously. Often starting conversations with residents with just a simple greeting, it’s not long before she’s asking, “What do you need?” or sharing resources and support.

    Community Justice
See All Publications and Digital Media →

News

  • Brooklyn’s Alternative Approach to Gun Violence Shows Promise

    June 23, 2022
    The Trace

    In a series on gun violence in New York by The Trace and The Guardian, the final article details the complex reasons that shootings have declined in Brooklyn, crediting Brooklyn’s more-developed infrastructure of Crisis Management System groups and its network of community-based organizations, like the Brownsville Community Justice Center. Hailey Nolasco, our director of community-based violence prevention; Mallory Thatch, program manager; and Deron Johnston, the deputy director for community development, share their perspectives on on the changes—both positive and negative—Brownville has seen regarding gun possession and violence.

    Also published by The Guardian: The Borough That Figured It Out: How Brooklyn Reduced Gun Violence

  • Changemakers in Action: Manuel Lariño

    Manuel Lariño has been with the Center for Court Innovation for over 18 years. Now in his role as associate director of Placemaking and Workforce Development, Manuel supports the teams that operate Brownsville Community Justice Center’s placemaking and mobility-from-poverty initiatives, which focus on public safety, community organizing, and neighborhood revitalization.

  • Taking A Restorative Approach To Youth Justice

    April 6, 2022
    WNYC

    WNYC Radio Rookies reporter Deborah Ugo-Omenukwa worked with the Center to explore restorative justice in youth courts. She spoke with our Brownsville Community Justice Center to learn more about restorative approaches to the legal system, and the difference between punishment and consequences.

View Archive →

Looking to Implement a Program in Your Neighborhood?

Find out more about how we can help you.
Contact Our Experts →

Partners

The Brownsville Community Justice Center has been endorsed by former New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and numerous local partners such as the Brownsville Partnership, Community Partnership Commission Association, SCO Family Services, the Brownsville Recreation Center, and the Brooklyn Clergy Task Force. Support for planning and programming has come from a number of federal, state, and local agencies, including the City of New York, the; U.S. Department of Justice, the New York State Unified Court System, and several private funders, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Robin Hood Foundation.

Related Areas of Focus

We rely on the generosity of supporters to do the work we do.

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