For this project, CWP supported a year-long evaluation of the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council. The Justice Ambassadors Youth Council, a program led by Columbia University’s Center for Justice, is an innovative program in which young New Yorkers, including those who have been impacted by the justice system as well as Columbia University students, work with city agencies and community leaders to co-author policy proposals. The proposals aim to transform the justice system and address community challenges in New York City.

The Justice Ambassadors Youth Council has inspired numerous policy changes throughout New York City government, including an innovative new community-led intervention to reduce gun violence and street crew involvement in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. With CWP’s support, the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council undertook an extensive program evaluation to consider the broader impact of the Justice Ambassador Youth Council within New York City as well as outcomes unique to its government representatives and youth participants. In addition, the evaluation also considered the implementation process of JAYC with recommendations for ongoing program improvement.   

The evaluation demonstrated that across the four years of its programming and five cohorts, the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council has been a catalyst for change not only for its individual participants, but also for the communities that it prioritizes, and the broader systems and institutions of New York City and State. Though small in scale, it has resulted in numerous community events, new collaborative organizational partnerships, policy proposal ideas, and publications. It has also demonstrated reductions of youth involvement with the criminal legal system as a result of the program. A summary of the evaluation approach, methodology, findings and recommendations can be found here.
 

About Justice Ambassadors Youth Council (JAYC)

This is an 8-week program in which young New Yorkers engage with city agency and community leaders to develop policy proposals that advance alternative approaches to justice and community well-being through open and honest dialogue about identity, social change, and systems of mass incarceration and criminalization. It offers resources to young individuals closest to the problem of mass incarceration while also providing them with a platform to use their insights, life experience and voice to directly engage with developing transformative policy. More than 100 youth and adults have completed the program since it launched in 2019. Leaders from the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Bronx district attorneys’ offices; the New York City Police Department; the Department of Education; New York City Administration for Children’s Services; the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice; the City Council, and other city entities have taken part.
 

In Partnership With:

• Columbia University Center for Justice