Juvenile Justice Project

The Correctional Association founded the Juvenile Justice Project in 1997 in response to increasing calls for more punitive and harsh responses to youths who become involved in the juvenile justice system.

In New York and across the nation, state legislatures have enacted legislation that has increased the number of offenses for which juveniles can be charged in the adult criminal court; increased the length of time for which young people can be incarcerated; permitted youths to be incarcerated with adults; and created maximum security placement centers for juveniles.

These kinds of regressive approaches to youth crime represent a return to the abusive and unjust conditions that originally led to the creation of the juvenile justice system. Moreover, despite the clear intersections between poverty, racism, and youth incarceration in New York, city and state leaders continue to spend huge sums of public money to lock up youth of color from low-income families rather than address the underlying societal factors driving youth incarceration policies.

Through its work, the Juvenile Justice Project seeks to reorient the justice system away from a punitive approach toward a stronger emphasis on community-based prevention and alternatives to jail and prison. In 2002, the Project released Rethinking Juvenile Detention in New York City, a report which presents a blueprint for transforming the juvenile justice system in New York. The Juvenile Justice Project believes that any effort to transform youth justice policies should adopt a vision of community justice – an effort to form creative partnerships between community groups and justice institutions to change the way the juvenile justice system operates in low-income, urban neighborhoods and in the larger society.

More specifically, the Project:

1. coordinates the Juvenile Justice Coalition to advocate and lobby for fair and effective responses to youth crime;
2. produces reports, position papers and fact sheets, which analyze existing juvenile justice policies and explore alternatives;
3. educates the public and state and local legislators about juvenile justice issues through media outreach, public forums, advocacy days in Albany, and other public events; and
4. trains young people to become leaders in the movement to transform juvenile justice policies in New York.

In 2004, the Project launched Each One Teach One, a comprehensive youth leadership training and organizing program for youth affected by incarceration.

Building on its success, in 2006 the Project began another youth leadership program, SAFE Passages, which focuses on improving juvenile justice policy that affects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people.

For more information, contact Charisa Smith, Juvenile Justice Project Director, at (212) 254-5700 ext. 315.