Community Justice Centre, USA

The Community Justice Centre, Inc. (CJC), a non-profit, community based, research, educational, and crime prevention organisation, was founded by Warren Harry, George Prendes, Eddie Ellis, and a group of other alumni of the New York State prison system in January, 1993. It is the authentic voice of over 69,000 prisoners incarcerated in the state of New York. Its goal is to educate, organise, and empower prisoners, their families and friends.

The CJC was originally conceived, inside the prisons, after a prisoner study revealed that over 85% of the prisoners in New York State are Black or Latino and that more than 75% of them come from seven neighbourhoods in New York City. These neighbourhoods include: Manhattan's Lower East Side and Harlem, the South Bronx, Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville and East New York, and Queens' South Jamaica.

The CJC has developed a unique analytical framework, called "The Non-Traditional Approach to Criminal and Social Justice". It examines and connects debilitating socio-economic conditions in inner city communities of colour with the disproportionate numbers of Afrikan Americans and Latinos, especially youth, encountering and entering the criminal justice/prison system.

From this analysis the CJC has designed and implemented various programs, classes, workshops, seminars and forums (inside the prisons and outside in "free" society) to stimulate public debate, inform public policy, and educate inner city youth about personal and societal change. The Centre advocates problem solving by empowering people to create daring and innovative approaches to inner city problems.

The CJC rejects traditional approaches to criminal justice which ignore socio-economic justice. The group's primary goal is to empower inner city communities of colour. This is accomplished through education and information sharing in order to create the climate for social, economic and political change by providing the communications, structure and information necessary to make informed decisions about the quality of life in these areas.

The CJC is staffed by an extraordinary group of professionals, all of whom attended college in the prisons with some receiving master's degrees, whose work draws upon a wide range of technical skills, street experience and academic expertise. They have created experimental anti-crime/anti-violence educational models for youth leadership training, family stability, life skills, job preparedness, and peer role modelling inside the prisons. These same models are offered outside as alternatives to existing educational efforts. Among these are: Afrikan Studies Program, Resurrection Study Group, Conciencia Study Group, Operation: Cease Fire, Violence Prevention Teams, Rites of Passage, and Mentoring. They have lectured at various academic institutions including Yale Law School, Brooklyn College, and Columbia University School of Social Work. Their assistance and counsel in formulating non-traditional crime preventive approaches for "at risk" young adults has been requested by city, state and federal agencies, corporations, and private sector groups.