CfJ Co-Director Geraldine Downey and Jarrell Daniels Speak at Corrections Symposium in Ireland

This week, our Co-Director Professor Geraldine Downey and the founder of our Justice Ambassadors Youth Council Jarrell Daniels visited Prof. Downey's home country of Ireland to present at the fourth Correctional Research Symposium, hosted by the Northern Ireland Prison Service in Belfast. 

Jarrell presented alongside CfJ partner Dr. Frederica Coppola, Assistant Professor of Criminal Law, IE University Law School, Spain, in a workshop title "Collaborative Justice - A Paradigm for Youth Crime Prevention and Penal Policy Reform". 

Using the Center's Justice Ambassadors Youth Council program as a case study, the talk advocated for implementing similar programs or intervention models to engage high-risk youth and those involved in the legal system at various stages of the criminal justice process. Jarrell and Dr. Coppola called for academic and government action to embrace this holistic approach as a way to address the harms caused by systemic disparities that too often contribute to incarceration. 

The goal of the workshop was to expand legal perspectives to understand and respond to the needs of individuals involved in the courts or carceral process through holistic programming and an inclusive network of support that empowers legal system-involved people to transform their lives. This paradigm emphasizes empowerment, inclusivity and local ownership, aiming to ensure that those directly affected by issues being addressed have a central role in shaping the solutions. It emphasizes relational accountability, social integration, humanness, inclusive-intervention planning, and equality.