This fact sheet summarizes the mission of Newark Community Solutions, an initiative of the Center for Court Innovation that seeks to re-engineer how low-level cases are handled at the Newark Municipal Court in Newark, New Jersey.
Jill Harris says she's "shocked to find myself working for a D.A." A long-time advocate for criminal justice reform, Harris, now the head of the Brooklyn D.A.'s Justice 2020 reform initiative, offers her take on the role of the prosecutor in the third installment of our series on the debate over prosecutor power.
Highlights from a public screening and panel discussion of Bill Moyers's 'Rikers: An American Jail,' moderated by New Thinking host, Matt Watkins. Commenting on the film and the future of criminal justice reform are Tina Luongo of the Legal Aid Society, Jill Harris of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, and two of the people formerly held on Rikers featured in the film: Barry Campbell of the Fortune Society, and Johnny Perez of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.
On our New Thinking podcast, Patrick Sharkey, the author of Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence, discusses the wider costs of violence and the threat posed by inequality and disinvestment to the current fragile gains. He points to the signal role of community organizing and community-based nonprofits in combating violence and building safer, more resilient cities.
On our 'New Thinking' podcast, Nashville's top public defender Dawn Deaner explains why she thinks public defending has been "set up to fail" and how working to engage the community—both those who need public defenders and those who never will—is a lifeline for a profession in crisis.
Since 2016, the community court in Eugene, Oregon, has met every week in the downtown library. It's part of an effort getting a lot of attention on the West Coast to bring problem-solving justice to friendlier settings. On our 'New Thinking' podcast, hear about Eugene's success with the new model.
Written by Greg Berman, director of the Center for Court Innovation, and Julian Adler, director of policy and research, Start Here from the New Press offers a road map of concrete actions to reduce the number of people sent to jail and prison, highlighting key lessons from successful programs across the country.
This brief outlines successful prosecutor-researcher collaborations and offers ideas to improve the working relationships of prosecutors and researchers. It was written by the Center for Court Innovation in collaboration with the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice.
