The Potential for America’s Criminal Legal System to Become a Criminal Justice System
By: Alexander Rosario
As New Yorkers, we take the train — a lot. One out of every five rides or so, someone will board our car externally struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue. The unwritten subway rule is to not make eye contact and just pretend nothing is happening until your stop approaches, isn’t it? The problem is that this has become a microcosm of how we deal with all mental illness and its roots in our country. I have watched a senior citizen struggling with mental health issues break down in tears of joy after mere moments of human interaction, but I have also witnessed someone who — after experiencing the trauma of incarceration — flinched in response to a stranger initiating conversation. As social creatures, isolation and neglect may affect everyone differently, but it damages all of us. Having witnessed the effects of social isolation and mental illness in my city and in my own family, I have worked to understand policies and research at the intersection of law and psychology, knowing these are critical to addressing the mental health crisis we face. Through internships and my studies at John Jay, I’ve seen up close some creative approaches to these challenges that I believe deserve more investment and experimentation in order to address these urgent and widespread mental health needs.
As a student at Xaverian High School, I was fortunate enough to see innovative, effective interventions up close while working with the Young Adult Court in Kings County, a product of the Center for Court Innovation. One of CCI’s innovative programs that helps mitigate over-incarceration practices is their diversion court for teenagers and young adults ages 16–24 who have committed nonviolent misdemeanors and seek an alternative route from incarceration. After the intake process, the defendant is given several sessions of a program relating to their interests — e.g. if they are intrigued by art, they will participate in several art class sessions. The program’s primary goal is to “offer responses to law-breaking behavior that are proportionate, emphasize accountability, and connect participants with social services to reduce the probability of future offending.” Once participants of the program attend their required amount of sessions, their record is expunged, therefore avoiding potentially harmful long term barriers to success and hopefully exposing them to strong programming to explore their interests. The whole point of the court is to prevent these young adults from being lost to the criminal legal system too young. Because research now clearly shows that the brain is not yet fully developed before the age of 24, teens are more at risk of making rash decisions. Overall, the CCI program helps defendants avoid further interactions with the criminal legal system and connects them with support to help them thrive.
At court, I often saw mental health needs of young people addressed but there was little of that available for people beyond the age of 24? Were these groups being left out? The Center for Court Innovation worked to address this by opening a Mental Health Court in Brooklyn that “uses a broad array of graduated rewards and sanctions to respond to progress and setbacks in treatment, coordinating its responses with treatment providers to help motivate defendants to comply with their individualized treatment plans.” Additionally, because many defendants struggle with intersectional issues such as physical health issues, unemployment, homelessness, and substance abuse, the court works with a network of government and service providers to aid them and connect them to services. I was fortunate enough to intern with Hon. D’Emic at Mental Health Court, who has weekly meetings with his defendants, and has presided over Mental Health Court in Brooklyn since its inception in 2002. Since then, 925 people have completed programs in his court. The weekly meetings are not required by law, but the judge holds them anyway in order to foster a relationship with the defendants so they don’t feel like a judge is waiting for them to fail, but rather, like a friend is trying to guide them. Setting a supportive tone for the courtroom is something that I hadn’t necessarily seen in previous years, and it made me optimistic for what the future of our criminal legal system could hold.
Given the complexity of providing solutions to communities and people dealing with mental illness and its challenges with the criminal legal system, I’m interested in what’s working.
Seeing the Center for Court Innovation in action made me curious about how they got their start and if there were more organizations that work to create a fair, humane, justice system, which brought me to Propel, a partner of the Center’s. As a 2021 Democracy Fellow at Propel, I’ve learned through the Propel Justice portfolio how a funder and collaborator can contribute to ending mass incarceration and support leaders who are formerly incarcerated to build their own solutions.
In addition to highly tested strategies and organizations like CCI, it’s helpful, as I think about where I can make a difference, to see how a justice-focused organization is launched and gets its footing. At Propel, I’ve had the opportunity to witness this up close with the Full Citizen’s Coalition. The Full Citizens Coalition is a grassroots organization, launched with initial support from Propel, that supports and mentor people returning home. The organization also builds and and exercises political muscle for the rights of formerly incarcerated citizens, including a recent impressive win in Connecticut to extend voting rights to people with felony convictions. I have seen the tireless efforts that James Jeter — Co-Founder of the Full Citizens Coalition and current Propel Justice Fellow — puts into this work to advance voting rights, support returning citizens, and hold the system accountable. From researching prosecutorial overreach, to connecting college students with grassroots leaders to build a powerful coalition, to lobbying and speaking up with elected officials and publishing op-eds and speaking publicly in order to galvanize voters, to creating a welcoming place and opportunities for returning citizens, James is a model for all of us hoping to create change. And, as he would be the first to say, he’s just getting started, and has a lot more to accomplish in the coming years.
The challenge is that the recidivism rate in America is one of the highest of all industrialized nations, because there are very few properly established ways to bolster re-entry in this world. The lack of re-entry preparation falls short in every area from housing, professional support, political will to make better policies, down to navigating the complexity of changing technologies in the world.
Apps that were popular a week ago no longer have any relevance now. After being cut off from the world, it takes additional effort to use current technology to even communicate, and despite this, in the few short years he’s been home, James has been able to navigate life at home AND launch and grow his non-profit to deliver on its mission. Without any social media presence and limited technological resources, James was able to get a bill allowing formerly incarcerated citizens in Connecticut to vote, design his own civic education curriculum for Yale undergraduates, support other returning citizens, and has so much more in mind. Even if one is able to adapt to the technology, individuals in some states are still barred from a full re-entry due to different laws preventing incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals from voting and/or participating fully in society. The inability to vote and actively have a role in changing and standing up for your community can place you in a helpless state of mind, and damages you psychologically, as well as keeps your voice from being heard. As many as 4,000 Connecticut citizens were experiencing some of those damages until James and his team at FCC stepped in.
Before working as Propel Justice Fellow, I thought nonprofits were entities that focused on one specific issue with a group of interested people and a funder behind the wheel. The Full Citizens Coalition and the range of projects it tackles has taught me that it’s so much more than that. Between spending hours scouring the internet for other funding opportunities, communicating with your team all day to coordinate the project’s next move, creating a budget to fit a growing team for years to come, not to mention galvanizing support for your cause, — these are the aspects of launching an organization that James is juggling every day — building from the ground up.
The criminal legal system will never be perfect because we as humans, will never be perfect. However, just as we continue to strive towards greatness every day, we can continue to strive for a better criminal legal system, and it starts with prevention and reversal. We need to reverse the adverse effects of systemic racism and a brutal one-size-fits-all so called ‘justice system’. The reversal starts with mentorship projects like The Full Citizens’ Coalition and coordinated efforts towards re-entry like those being done by the Mental Health Court. Then, we need to ensure that there’s no longer a need for reversal, and that begins with diversion programs, like the Young Adult Court. We have come a long way, but we can go so much further, and it all starts with an idea and a support system. A vehicle for change requires all of its moving parts to function properly, and these vehicles can’t function without our help. The long term changes are why it is important for us to volunteer, donate, sign petitions, and protest whenever we can, in order to be the support system for the support systems working to make an unjust system more just, because only when that happens will we be able to propel ourselves into the future.
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Alexander Rosario is a sophomore at Macaulay Honors College at John Jay. He is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Forensic Psychology. He is specifically interested in the overlap between impact investing and the criminal legal system. Coming from a Latino background, he is particularly interested strategies that lead to major diversions from the court system and ways that greater political strength can bolster minority groups’ standings in America — whether it be political or economic.
