Research Projects

Project Restore Bed-Stuy Evaluation, 
Prepared by:
Geraldine Downey PhD
Darragh McGee
Gabriel Feldman
Jarrell Daniels
Brooke Burrows
Project Restore Bed-Stuy Evaluation
Project Restore Bed-Stuy Evaluation

Project Restore Bed-Stuy (PRB), a gang-violence intervention pilot program, concluded in January 2024. This report summarizes the key learning and evaluation findings of PRB, from January 2023–June 2024. Read here

Solitary By Many Other Names: A Report on the Persistent and Pervasive Use of Solitary Confinement in New York City Jails
Solitary By Many Other Names: A Report on the Persistent and Pervasive Use of Solitary Confinement in New York City Jails
Solitary By Many Other Names: A Report on the Persistent and Pervasive Use of Solitary Confinement in New York City Jails

This report reveals how New York City jails continue to inflict solitary confinement on people in its custody, in violation of state law and local regulations, with devastating and deadly consequences. Read more here

New York's New Death Penalty: The Death Toll of Mass Incarceration in a Post Execution Era
New York's New Death Penalty: The Death Toll of Mass Incarceration in a Post Execution Era
New York's New Death Penalty: The Death Toll of Mass Incarceration in a Post Execution Era

New York's New Death Penalty compiles and analyzes data on in-custody deaths in New York State between 1976 and 2020 and offers policy recommendations for curtailing the number of deaths behind bars. Read more here

Unlocking Billions: A Fiscal Analysis of Pending Justice Reforms in New York State
Unlocking Billions: A Fiscal Analysis of Pending Justice Reforms in New York State

A fiscal analysis of pending justice reforms in 2021 in New York State finds that implementing them would collectively save and/or generate an estimated $1.52 billion for the state annually. Read more here.

Beyond Punishment: A Critical and Interpretive Phenomenology of Accountability
Beyond Punishment: A Critical and Interpretive Phenomenology of Accountability

This dissertation by former CfJ Director of Programs Cameron Rasmussen explores forces that promote and hinder accountability-taking within the carceral system through interviews with 11 formerly incarcerated men. Read more here

A map of Concentrated Incarceration and the Public-Housing-to-Prison Pipeline in New York City Neighborhoods
Concentrated Incarceration and the Public-Housing-to-Prison Pipeline in New York City Neighborhoods

The National Executive Council at the Center for Justice partnered with The CUNY Graduate Center to highlight structural incarceration and found that incarceration rates in New York City census tracts with public housing developments outstrip the incarceration rates in census tracts without public housing, even though crime rates are equivalent. Read more here

Aging in Prison: Reducing Elder Incarceration and Promoting Public Safety
Aging in Prison: Reducing Elder Incarceration and Promoting Public Safety
Aging in Prison: Reducing Elder Incarceration and Promoting Public Safety

Columbia University’s Center for Justice, with Release Aging People in Prison/ RAPP, the Correctional Association of New York, the Osborne Association, the Be the Evidence Project/Fordham University, and the Florence V. Burden Foundation, coordinated a symposium in Spring of 2014 to discuss the rapidly growing population of elderly and aging people in prison. A series of papers emerged from the symposium. Together, they provide a rich overview and analysis of aging people in prison from some of the best thinkers in this field. Read more here