NYC Probation Commissioner Is Wreaking Havoc On Youth Intervention Programs 

Over the past few months, New York’s Department of Probation (DOP) has paused referrals to Advocate Intervene Mentor (AIM) Lite programs, a key intervention program helping at-risk youth, raising concerns about the future of public safety at a critical time.

The number of major crimes committed by minors in New York City has risen significantly over the past seven years. According to New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services data, in 2023, 3,521 New Yorkers under 18 were arrested for major (felony) crimes, compared to 2,011 youth felony arrests in 2018. That’s a 54% increase in five years.

In February 2022, Mayor Eric Adams announced the expansion of youth mentor programs for young people on probation, highlighting the success of “credible messengers” in turning young peoples’ lives around. Credible messenger mentors are relatable role models that help teens improve their self-esteem, academic achievement, and peer relationships while reducing negative behaviors. Additionally, peer mentoring opens up educational and career opportunities, strengthens community bonds, and offers an alternative to juvenile probation, reducing recidivism rates. 

No One Escapes: Inside the Crisis of Violence and Silence in New York Prisons

In 2017, at age 35, Robert Brooks entered the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision prison following a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault. His family never imagined Brooks’ incarceration would be a death sentence. But the unimaginable happened in December 2024 at Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County, located in upstate New York. Brooks, then 43 and four years away from release, suffered a brutal physical assault by correction officers. The attack killed him. The Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office ultimately charged 10 corrections officers with murder and manslaughter. 

Just two months after Brooks died in custody, another incarcerated man, Messiah Nantwi, died following a violent assault by correction officers at Mid-State Correctional Facility, located one mile from Marcy. Prosecutors charged several officers with his murder and manslaughter as well, just weeks after charges were filed in Brooks’ death. 

Kevin Mays, co-chair of Survivors of the System (SOS), a support and advocacy group led by people impacted by the criminal legal system, fosters healing through group self-determination. It addresses mass incarceration...

Probation and Parole | Columbia Justice Lab

12 Oct 2023 04:56

Founded as either an up-front diversion from incarceration (probation) or a back-end release valve to prison crowding (parole), community corrections in the United States has grown far beyond what its founders could have imagined, with a profound, unintended impact on incarceration. With 3.9 million adults under community corrections supervision in America (more than double the number in prison and jail), probation and parole have become a substantial contributor to our nation’s mass incarceration dilemma as well as a deprivation of liberty in their own right.

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Press Release: 1-Year Anniversary of Less Is More

20 Sept 2022 04:54

Albany, NY – This week marks the one-year anniversary of the historic enactment of the Less Is More: Community Supervision Revocation Reform Act. As the most comprehensive parole reform measure yet passed in the U.S., Less Is More restricts the use of incarceration for non-criminal technical parole violations, bolsters due process for people accused of parole violations, and provides earned time credits for people on parole (see fact sheet for full details). 

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Changing Language Changes Perception

12 Sept 2019 20:29

Inmate. Convict. Offender. Prisoner. Predator. Felon. Jailbird. Criminal. Ex-con. Ex-offender. Ex-felon. These terms are routinely used by mainstream society to describe human beings who have been sentenced to and served a period of confinement in prison or jail. These and other dogmatic labels are purposely and effortlessly applied to irrevocably stigmatize and marginalize the formerly incarcerated individual.

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