Partners

The Incarceration Prevention Initiative has built broad and unique partnerships within the Columbia Community, between academic institutions in New York City, and with various community organizations and policymakers.

The Justice Initiative at Columbia University

Kathy Boudin and Cheryl Wilkins are the director and associate director of the CJI. They are part of a community of people who have returned from prison and are currently participating in service and policy programs promoting change inside of universities. The Initiative launched in 2013. Its origins date back to 2009 with the founding of the Criminal Justice Initiative: Supporting Children, Families and Communities, based at the School of Social Work. CJI is recognized as a leader in developing programs and trainings addressing mass incarceration and its consequences. CJI has also succeeded in building a web of relationships with a wide array of faculty, students and community members working on issues of mass incarceration and criminal justice.

Through our yearlong program of events, Beyond the Bars: A Yearlong Focus on Incarceration, we aim to ensure that students and faculty are more informed about and engaged with criminal justice issues. Our education work includes supporting innovative teaching related to justice and incarceration throughout the schools and disciplines. Our Investing in Justice Pilot Projects funds university-community research partnerships, curriculum and conferences and our research working group will provide opportunities for faculty and students to receive support for ongoing research. Our policy work includes a large symposium and campaign to release aging people in prison. In Fall 2014, we will begin our advocacy efforts to increase educational opportunities for people who are in prison and who have come home from prison. Finally, our website is a resource for work on new thinking about justice at Columbia and in the community.

CJI runs the Social Justice Training Institute and supports the Criminal Justice Caucus in the annual Beyond the Bars conference. As a part of Beyond the Bars, the What is Justice? Film Series, a two-semester long program, will explore issues of incarceration via screenings and post-screening discussions of documentaries and feature films. Through the screening and discussions, attendees and organizers will explore the ways in which these issues impact our society, and how they inform our definitions and imaginations of justice. The series is co-organized in collaboration with the Media and Idea Lab at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, the Center for the Study of Law and Culture and Columbia University School of the Arts and Teachers College, Vice President’s Office for Diversity and Community Affairs.

Additional partners include The Public Science Project, the College and Community Fellowship, Citizens Against Recidivism, Education from the Inside Out Coalition, Healing Communities Network, Lyrics from Lockdown, New York Prison Education Initiative, The Correctional Association of New York, The Osborne Association, and RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison). Columbia University partners include the Mass Incarceration and Public Health Initiative at MSPH as well as 9 additional centers and institutes.

Facebook: Center for Justice at Columbia University
Twitter: @JusticeColumbia

From Punishment to Public Health: Capabilities for a New Ecology of Justice

In the face of these daunting challenges of mass incarceration, many of us involved in both public health and criminal justice policy, practice and professional education are finding common ground. We are developing a mutual focus on the endemic social and structural problems that lead to incarceration, and we seek to re-imagine the features of institutions and policymaking that will position public health interventions to be successful and held accountable to better health, safety and social outcomes and to reduce the risk of criminal and anti-social behavior.

Under the umbrella theme: From Punishment to Public Health, or P2PH, our team is already working to cull current research and design a platform through which we can foster collaborative dialogue and offer technical assistance to government agencies and non-profit and private service providers committed to change.  Key partners invested in accelerating reforms will collaborate to adopt, replicate and diffuse proven strategies that address the root causes of criminal behavior.  In doing so, partner groups will focus on building the core competencies evidence shows are needed to significantly expand successful interventions.  These competencies include:

  • METRICS – Effective metrics to mobilize and re-configure action and drive reform

  • GOVERNANCE – Coordinated and accountable governance focused on cross-sector change and outcomes-driven funding streams

  • PARTICIPATION – Active participation from program target populations to ensure buy-in and context-specific interventions

  • MESSAGING – Improved public literacy and effective mobilization around the causes and impacts of mass incarceration.

P2PH consists of policy innovation teams centered around primary intervention (early childhood opportunities), secondary intervention (pre-arrest diversion protocols), and tertiary intervention (health homes and criminal justice). Their Academy working groups focus on the Harlem Youth Justice Collaborative, violence prevention, and correctional health, each with their own respective partnerships. Their 2014 spring conference on April 23rd, 2014 is called “Decarceration: A Public Health Approach to Reentry,” is their first annual conference.

This project is a partnership of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, New York University School of Medicine, and the Vera Institute of Justice.