Red Hook Justice - Your Community. Your Court.

Last week, high school students participating in the Justice Center’s summer youth programs took a break from serving as youth court members and interns at local businesses to spend the day exploring the role of higher education in their futures. Having watched all of last year’s graduating seniors from the Red Hook Youth Court go on to attend a stellar list of colleges and universities, these high schoolers were eager to learn about what the two schools they toured, Rutgers University in New Brunswick and Princeton University , might have to offer towards reaching their goals. As young people already actively involved in their communities, speaking with representatives from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs gave many students a taste of how they could put that experience into practice towards a career by studying public policy. At the end of the day, all students gained a better sense of what the college application process and campus life are ...

Thanks to a partnership with the Groundswell Community Mural Project  and the hard work of a group of dedicated youth artists, Red Hook's Youth Justice Programs room now has a beautiful new mural, "Transform." To read the story of a teen who became involved in the mural project as a result of a community service requirement assigned to him by the Red Hook Youth Court , click here . Take a look below at photos of the final product as well as the work in progress.

At the Red Hook Community Justice Center, we are always working to identify meaningful community service projects for young people – mandatory and voluntary. This is often easier said than done, with a lot of false starts and hiccups along the way.   However, we are fortunate to have some incredible community-based organizations to assist us in this endeavor. Our longstanding collaboration with one such partner, Groundswell Community Mural Project , is featured this week in a local arts-oriented paper, the Brooklyn Rail. The article traces the story of a high school sophomore who was connected to Groundswell to fulfill the community service requirement assigned to him by the Red Hook Youth Court , after a conversation during his hearing about his interest in art. We also hear from a teen artist about the process that goes into designing and creating the mural that will soon go up on a wall in the youth programs space at the Justice Center: “We started ...