Red Hook Justice - Your Community. Your Court.

The New York Juvenile Justice Corps is off to another great start. We’ve just entered our third year of operation and completed the first week of orientation and training. Established in 2010, the New York Juvenile Justice Corps is an AmeriCorps service program that seeks to prevent young people in New York City from becoming enmeshed in the criminal justice system. The Corps is comprised of 58 members that primarily come from New York City. Members work with hundreds of young people every year and serve at CCI projects including: Harlem, Red Hook, Brownsville, Midtown, Staten Island Ready, QUEST, CCI's Youth Courts, the Attendance Achievement Program and the Youth Justice Board. Members also serve with our partners at the John Jay College Office of Community Outreach and Service Learning , and the Office of Children and Family Services. In addition to serving thousands of young people throughout the five boroughs, the Corps is also designed to give members a...

The Justice Center played host yesterday to two celebrations of the amazing young people that we have worked with this summer. Our first event was the graduation of sixteen interns from our High School Summer Internship Program.  The seven-week program involved two weeks of training at the Justice Center in skills like resume and cover letter writing, interviewing, and other skills necessary to succeed in the working world. For the following five weeks, interns were placed in a variety of sites throughout our catchment area including the Groundswell Community Mural Project , Community Board 7 , The Diamond Law Firm, The Red Hook Star Revue , Youth Made Media , the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation , Fireflies New York, Caselnova Restaurant , Beth Elohim Summer Camp , and SUNY Downstate Medical Center . Family, friends, internship supervisors, and Justice Center staff all came together to congratulate the interns on their hard work. A highlight of the event was hear...

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.

The Red Hook Community Justice Center and the New York Juvenile Justice Corps hosted a high-profile visit last Friday, April 13th, from leaders involved with AmeriCorps at the national and state levels. The Justice Center was chosen as one of only two sites the group visited in New York state. From left: Judge Alex Calabrese, Red Hook Community Justice Center, Rosa Moreno-Mahoney, Acting Director - AmeriCorps State & National Corporation for National & Community Service, Mark Walter, Executive Director, New York State Commission on National & Community Service, and Alfred Siegel, Deputy Director, Center for Court Innovation Visitors, including  Adrienne Hallett, Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate Professional Staff,  Rosa Moreno-Mahoney, Acting Director - AmeriCorps State & National Corporation for National & Community Service,  Mark Walter, Executive Director, New York State Commission on National & Community Service, and...

Last week’s spring recess from school filled the Justice Center with kids doing community service through our Adolescent Diversion Pilot (ADP) program. On Thursday, April 12 th, Red Hook’s Community Service team partnered with the Department of Transportation for a special community service project to prime and paint 600 feet of wall space on the bike path leading up to the Manhattan Bridge. Bike path before ADP youth community service work Many of the teens began the day reluctant to take time out of their vacation to tackle such a large and daunting task, but after encouragement and motivational one-on-one talks from staff, they began to encourage each other to complete the project. As the day progressed, youth shared their experiences with each other and discussed lessons they have learned from their contact with the criminal justice system.  By the end of the day, youth were able to go home proud of completing a meaningful project on a highly visible and utilized bike pat...

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 ...