In a new report, more than 100 young people in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, open up about why they carry guns. Their answer? Fear—for their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. Hear from the people who made the study happen—Javonte Alexander, Basaime Spate, and Elise White—our community researchers with personal ties to the social networks of the young people who shared their experiences.
Our study of more than 100 young gun-carriers in Brooklyn identifies fear—for themselves and their loved ones—as the overwhelming factor behind the decision to carry. Under constant threat from other gun-carriers, as well as from police, and deprived of economic opportunities, participants describe a world with vanishingly few options. This report is part of a first-of-its-kind project using street participatory research to explore the socio-cultural roots of gun-carrying in U.S. cities.
Juan Carlos Areán from Futures Without Violence speaks with Jojopahmaria Nsoroma, the owner and steward of Higher Expectations Consulting Collaborative, and James Encinas, Spanish program facilitator and trainer at the Family Peace Initiative, about the importance of self-reflection in facilitating abusive partner intervention programs. The group explores the ways in which engaging in ongoing self-reflection is an essential part of a facilitator's work in order to create a model of accountability for facilitators and participants alike.
April Barber Scales was a pregnant 15-year-old when she received two life sentences; Anthony Willis was 16 when he was sent away for life. After more than 25 years behind bars, they each received something desperately rare: clemency. They describe how they fought against a prison system that "sets you up for failure." We also hear from an organization in Baltimore that works exclusively with young people at high risk of violence. Rather than arrests and incarceration, what do these young people need?
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.
The Red Hook Community Justice Center works to strengthen Red Hook, Brooklyn, and surrounding areas by reducing crime and the use of incarceration, improving public trust in justice, and collaborating with the community to solve local problems.
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.
These guiding principles were created as part of the Abusive Partner Accountability and Engagement Training and Technical Assistance Project, an initiative funded by the Office on Violence Against Women. They are designed to inform abusive partner intervention programming (APIP), also known as battering intervention, at all stages of intervention—development, implementation, and evaluation. The goal of the principles is to enhance not only programs but also the broader community response to accountability and engagement for people who cause harm through intimate partner violence (IPV).
New York City has committed to closing its notorious Rikers Island jail facility by 2027, a seismic shift that would reorient the city's approach to incarceration. The plan envisions a citywide jail population of just over 3,000 people. But the population at Rikers has been growing for months, and Rikers itself is engulfed in crisis amidst a historic spike in deaths. On a roundtable episode of New Thinking: what are the prospects for finally getting Rikers closed?
A companion to the Center for Court Innovation’s podcast episode exploring strategies for abusive partner intervention programs within the LGBTQIA+ community, this document discusses the differences between intimate partner violence in cis-heteronormative and LGBTQIA+ relationships.
