the new york times: A New Tactic for Youthful Defendants

What if Michael Brown’s story had ended differently?

A teenager. A misdemeanor. A cop. But then, instead of bullets, what if Mr. Brown had received a granola bar, a “safe space” to discuss concepts like choice, and an invitation to make a collage as part of a deal to erase the arrest from his record?

In Mr. Brown’s hometown of Ferguson, Mo., and beyond, American teenagers who are born poor and dark are routinely arrested for things that others get away with. Sometimes, guns fire and lives disappear. More often, the encounter can risk destroying a life more slowly. But in Brooklyn — which was infamous for crime before becoming known for artisanal whiskey — an experiment is testing whether these early police encounters can be reinvented as an opportunity: to reach out to troubled youth, get them help and bend their perception of the law.

Terrell, 17, was an apt candidate for bending. A high school graduate bound for community college, he had already endured two rounds of “stop-and-frisk,” a pre-emptive police tactic that a judge eventually found unconstitutional. Then this summer he was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor.

When he arrived for his court date, his public defender informed him of a new program for 16- and 17-year-old defendants: Instead of pleading guilty, performing community service, having a criminal record and being supervised for up to a year by probation officers, he could participate in something called Young New Yorkers that afternoon. If he did, his case would be dismissed and sealed — erased from public records. (The Times agreed not to publish his last name and details of his arrest in exchange for his cooperation.)

Surprised, Terrell took the deal.

The United States, which accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners, is in the midst of a great rethinking of its criminal justice system, including changes in sentencing laws, more lenient marijuana policies and so-called restorative justice efforts.

The Brooklyn program is part of these changes. It is rooted in the belief that the criminal justice system often takes decent but mildly troubled young people and, instead of reforming them, turns an ephemeral circumstance — a crime — into an enduring identity: criminal.

“Theoretically, it’s supposed to be correctional,” said Judge George A. Grasso, who supervises the Brooklyn program. “But most people going through, it’s not correcting.”

Judge Grasso calls the program “collaborative justice.” Various parties — the judge, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, even the city’s Department of Education — work together to decide which program each defendant should enter (Young New Yorkers is one of a handful).

Though the program is new, pilot data suggests that it drastically reduces the chance that a young person will be arrested a second time. Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, which represents indigent clients, interprets that data this way: The program is bringing in young defendants for the right amount of time — long enough to rattle them, but not so long as to give them the self-perception of a criminal. “We’re showing that the smaller the intervention, the better the outcome,” she said.

Rachel Barnard, an Australian architect who founded Young New Yorkers, says she is “trying to pour beauty into the criminal justice system.”

So Terrell and a handful of other young arrestees went on an artsy, new-age journey. Ms. Barnard led them in taking pictures of one another, interviewing one another about their crimes and talents, and making collages about themselves. They talked about the marijuana they had bought, the subway cars they had illegally crossed between.

At first, many refused to cooperate. A few hours in, deep at work on collages, the pursuit of art had entranced them. They returned to court four days later, stood before Judge Grasso and had their cases “dismissed and sealed.”

“What is happening today doesn’t usually happen,” Judge Grasso told them. Then, for a few moments, American justice turned upside down, because the judge congratulated his defendants, stood up and gave them a standing ovation.

Written by Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/world/americas/a-new-tactic-for-youthful-defendants.html