Our Mission and Work
The Center for Justice is committed to ending mass incarceration and criminalization, and advancing alternative approaches to justice and safety through education, research, and policy change. Its mission is to help transform approaches to justice from being driven by punishment and retribution to being centered on prevention, healing and accountability. The Center is interdisciplinary and works in partnership with schools, departments, centers and institutes across Columbia, other universities, government agencies, community organizations, advocates and those directly affected by the criminal justice system.
The Center for Justice is nationally respected for engaging formerly incarcerated people in its leadership and decision making and is the locus for a network of local and national partners including formerly incarcerated people, grassroots activists, academics, community organizations, policy-makers and civic leaders.
We believe that dismantling the system of mass incarceration and criminalization to creating pathways to justice rooted in healing, prevention, accountability and equity requires a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach.
CfJ’s work is grounded in two guiding principles:
- Investing in people impacted by mass incarceration
- Transcending the punishment paradigm to make communities safer and more just.
Anchored in these principles, our core initiatives focus on four areas of work:
Leadership Development
The Center for Justice believes that those who have been impacted by incarceration, either through their own incarceration or the incarceration of someone close to them, have a unique and critical perspective to dismantle and transform the current criminal justice system. Since 2009, our leadership development programs have demonstrated that people across various disciplines, ages, and backgrounds can become leaders in the movement to end mass incarceration. We believe in promoting new emerging and established leaders who reflect the backgrounds, experiences, and needs of our communities, and we believe in offering them the tools, resources, and networks to excel.
Our approach to leadership development merges knowledge building with direct involvement in concrete projects. We are dedicated to working at the grassroots level while leveraging university resources to ensure that impacted people and their communities are empowered with the learning tools and community connections they need to become transformative leaders.
Narrative and Policy Change
Reforming and transforming our policies is an important part of confronting the mass incarceration crisis. Through our team’s and network’s personal experiences and subject matter expertise, we advocate for policy reform in a number of ways, inviting various stakeholders to participate in the process, including previously justice-involved youth and youth residing in New York City.
Our work has included advocating for decarceration through and transformation of parole reform; challenging the exclusion from criminal justice reform of people convicted of violent crimes; influencing the NYC City Council to pass the CARE Act, which addresses the care of returning aging people; and helping alter the makeup of the NY State parole board commissioners and parole regulations. Our work has been shared at conferences, published in reports, and documented in a video series.
The success of our multi-stakeholder policy work is in part thanks to the partnerships we have forged with Friends of the Island Academy, Brooklyn Outreach Network, New York City high schools, and city officials from agencies such as the Bronx Borough President Office, Department of Probation, Department of Education, New York City Council, New York City Police Department Community Affairs, Borough District Attorney Offices,Institute for Innovation in Prosecution, and NYC Administration of Child Services.
Collaborative Education
Although the United States comprises only five percent of the world’s population, we have more than twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. Statistical evidence overwhelmingly confirms that a college education reduces recidivism, increases employment opportunities, and strengthens communities.
According to the Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections, more than 50% of all incarcerated Manhattanites call Harlem home, which means Columbia University sits in a unique position to confront the mass incarceration crisis through education.
Emphasis on education has been central to our work. Our initiatives provide college-level courses in prison and for people returning home, as well as arts and media training for youth at Rikers Island and in communities impacted by incarceration. CfJ is recognized as both the hub and catalyst for collaborations throughout the community of currently and formerly incarcerated people, and the local and national community committed to justice. Our unique model of university-community collaboration is already being replicated.
Research
The Center for Justice is at the forefront of criminal justice research, leading gatherings of faculty, research scientists and fellows, graduate students, and community partners in order to share and discuss work in the field of criminal justice. We recognize that alongside delivering important and impactful programming, we have a responsibility to also participate in leading-edge discussions and research that impact our work. We welcome participants from various disciplines and institutions to join us.
Part of our research is conducted out of Columbia University’s Psychology Department, particularly in the Social Relations Lab. Much of its work seeks to illuminate individual and structural pathways through which the stigma associated with carceral identity can adversely affect interpersonal functioning and well-being outcomes in high-stakes domains. One of the goals of this work is to inform the development of evidence-based interventions that can disrupt stigma in ways that enable flourishing during reentry.
Our Story
Founded in 2014 by three women, Kathy Boudin, Cheryl Wilkins, and Geraldine Downey, two of whom are formerly incarcerated, the Center is deeply committed to the leadership of people who are formerly incarcerated. Kathy and Cheryl were instrumental in bringing back college courses to Bedford Hills, a correctional facility for women, after Pell grants for higher education were no longer offered. Rich with lived experience and dedication, the Center works with academics, organizers, activists, and community members to create more equitable and effective approaches to justice.
The United States is now at a historical moment where the consequences of mass incarceration and criminal justice policy have captured public attention promoting calls for change across partisan divide. Based in the strongly held belief that universities have a large role to play in enacting social change, the Center seeks to engage and harness the collective capacity of Columbia University and its range of resources, including faculty and students, to impact the trajectory of criminal justice policy. The Center is an interdisciplinary project as we seek to work beyond individual disciplines to create and support social change. Towards this end, we strongly believe that working in collaboration with those directly affected by mass incarceration and criminal justice policy, including people who have been formerly incarcerated and community organizations and advocates working on these issues, is critical to developing effective solutions. Lastly, we aim to serve as a bridge between academia and community and grass-roots organizations.