Criminal Justice

We at The Center for Community Problem Solving have designed a series of campaigns in direct response to requests from the thousands of clients, community residents, and service providers with whom we regularly partner. As central elements of each campaign, we have developed educational workshops (and accompanying written materials) that we deliver on a regular basis to diverse audiences in New York City and in other parts of the State and that we share as part of our Training Institute with people across the nation. Our current menu of criminal justice community education workshops includes:

• Reentry Orientation Workshops
• Constitutional Law in the Streets for Youth Workshops

Our Reentry Orientation Campaign aims dramatically to improve how we approach the challenges of reentry. Through evidence-based policy and practice initiatives, we hope to galvanize the collective spirit necessary to overcome inertia and to coordinate the public, private, and civic resources necessary to make such improvements a practical reality. As a pivotal part of this Campaign, we have developed a Reentry Orientation Workshop that serves both as a valuable pre- and post-release resource and as an effective learning vehicle for those on probation or in alternative-to-incarceration programs. Our Workshop walks participants step-by-step through the sometimes unwieldy processes of applying for various forms of identification and government benefits; getting emergency food, shelter, and clothing; finding and keeping affordable housing; accessing educational and employment opportunities; managing family and childcare issues; and meeting physical and mental health needs. Throughout the course of the Workshop, we make illustrative use of The Center for Community Problem Solving Reentry Guide , which lays out in great detail what our ambitious workshops aim in person to share. Organized both by service area and alphabetical order, the Reentry Guide includes highly accessible and extraordinarily thorough information about the hundreds of service providers The Center has interviewed. We include maps, cross-streets, business hours, eligibility (immigration, age, income) requirements, languages spoken, specific program information, and ways to access those services. Together the Reentry Guide and the Workshop improve participants' capacity to deal with immediate crises and to meet long-term goals, highlight gaps in our collective approach that permit all involved in criminal justice to target scare resources, and provide sophisticated means for candidly measuring how well together we are meeting ambitious goals.

Our Keeping Our Youth Out of the Criminal Justice System Campaign teams up with youth, parents, teachers, school administrators, service providers, juvenile justice system officials, and others to help communities discuss current criminal justice policies and practices, to develop and advocate for improved ones, and to strategize about how best to avoid entanglements with law enforcement altogether. In doing so, we are building relationships between constituencies of people not often considered part of the dialogue around criminal justice but who struggle on a daily basis with how to structure healthy and functional relationships with the system. Our series of workshops – including our Constitutional Law in the Streets for Youth Workshops – are geared towards helping youth from low-income, of color, and immigrant neighborhoods better handle encounters with law enforcement that seem virtually inevitable to many. We mean to reach both young people who have never gotten caught up in the system and those who already find themselves ensnared. Through imaginative participatory skits, presentations, frank discussions, and written materials, we aim to help New York City youth better understand and enforce their legal rights in their encounters with the police.

For more information or to schedule a workshop, please contact us at law.cps@nyu.edu or 212-998-6614.