Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/series/from-the-bureaus/page/26/)
Sixteen and 17-year-old first-time offenders with low-level offenses are heard by a court of their peers as part of a new pilot program called Project Reset taking flight in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Which side of the Hudson River you’re on means a “huge difference” for juvenile justice.
NEW YORK — It was supposed to be just fun and games on that dreary, rainy September day 21 years ago. But child’s play in that stairwell quickly turned deadly when a shot was fired, with 13-year-old Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. the bullet’s target.
NEW YORK — This isn’t your typical prison photography. But it isn’t supposed to be.
As part of his Windows from Prison workshop, Mark Strandquist asks incarcerated individuals a simple question: “If you could have a window in your cell, what place from your past would it look out to?”
NEW YORK — Hunting curbside metal trash at dawn, brothers Luqman and Aje Stroud creep down the streets of eastern Brooklyn in a banged-up white van they call the White Ghost. Now in their mid-20s, they have been at this since they were in grade school.
It could be a family business if the city didn’t say it was against the law.
Since he was 16, Ivan Cabrera has been spending time at New Alternatives, a drop-in center for 16- to 24-year-olds who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — and homeless. He goes there almost every Sunday for a free meal, HIV testing and a talk with other clients and caseworkers.
Cabrera calls the people there his family.
“About 50 percent of the patients we get are Latino males,” said Belzer. “Then another 35 to 40 percent are African-American [males]. In Los Angeles, they combine to make about 20 or 25 percent of the total population, so the disparity is very clear.”
Family members of youngsters killed by New York City police are imploring the governor to enact a law that would create a special prosecutor to investigate such killings.
New York activists have argued for decades that the New York Police Department and the prosecutors’ offices in the five boroughs work together too closely to have them be honest arbiters in investigating police abuse.
He will discuss the uptick in gun violence in New York City this year and such factors as the New York Police Department's scaled back stop-and-frisk policy and gangs.
The Red Hook Youth Court trains teens to serve as jurors and judges to handle real-life low-level misdemeanors committed by their peers. The all-teen jury has the power to impose sanctions such as community service hours, workshops or essays.