About Common Justice
Developing and advancing solutions to violence that transform lives.
Common Justice develops and advances solutions to violence that transform the lives of those harmed and foster racial equity without relying on incarceration.
In New York City, we operate the first alternative-to-incarceration and victim-service program in the United States that focuses on violent felonies in the adult courts. Locally and nationally, we leverage the lessons from our direct service to transform the justice system through partnerships, advocacy, and elevating the experience and power of those most impacted.
Rigorous and hopeful, we build practical strategies to hold people accountable for harm, break cycles of violence, and secure safety, healing, and justice for survivors and their communities.
We Work to Build Transformative Solutions to Violence That Can Displace Incarceration
Pragmatic and optimistic, we begin this work in practice. In NYC, Common Justice engages younger adults (ages 16 to 26) and those they have harmed in a rigorous and cutting-edge alternative to incarceration and victim service program. If the harmed parties agree, violent felony cases such as robbery and assault are diverted from the criminal legal system into a restorative justice process that gives participants the power and opportunity to collectively identify and address impacts, needs, and obligations, in order to heal and make things as right as possible. The agreements that emerge from these dialogues, together with the violence intervention curriculum, replace the prison sentences our responsible parties would otherwise have served, and we provide wraparound supports to our harmed parties to support them in coming through what happened to them and in their lives generally.
advocacy work
We are a team of change-makers, who believe that we can make a difference by addressing violence through community-based solutions and centering the needs of survivors.
learn moreShifting the Narrative Around Violence
Our national story about violence has helped give rise to mass incarceration. The United States incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world. At the same time, there are grave inequities in our treatment of crime victims, who pay the price for prison’s failure to deliver on its promise of safety. To talk responsibly about violence, it is essential to place the people who survive it at the center. This does not currently happen. Legislators have enacted draconian criminal justice laws in the names of survivors. Others have drawn on crime victims’ stories to motivate sympathy, horror, and outrage. But the one thing rarely done is to ask the full range of survivors what they want.
Common Justice is committed to telling the truth about violence—about the people who survive it, the people who cause it, and the strategies that will work to end it. We are sharing what we have learned in our decade of work addressing violence without prison. We are working with our partners to establish a new way forward. In doing so, we know no one can tell these stories better than the people whose lives are at stake, so we are working to create broad new platforms to elevate their voices and leadership from the block to the Capitol.”
learn more about the Narrative
The Common Justice Team
We are a team of change-makers, who believe that we can make a difference by addressing violence through community-based solutions and centering the needs of survivors.
meet the common justice teamThe Fair Access To Victim Compensation Campaign
The Fair Access To Victim Compensation Campaign is a state-wide campaign, led by several local New York-based groups and national organizations who are fighting for expanded and equitable access to victim compensation funds. Currently in New York State, survivors of violence are subject to onerous law enforcement reporting requirements when filing for victim compensation funds, and barred from access if they allegedly contributed to the crime in question or failed to show physical injury associated with their harm. This denies resources to countless survivors that could be used to pay for medical bills, funeral expenses, replacement of personal property, relocation expenses, and other costs associated with the harm they experienced.
eliminate barriers
New York City Collaborative to Transform Violence
The New York City Collaborative to Transform Violence aims to close that gap by bringing together people in CVI work in New York City into an 8-month cohort-based learning collaborative to integrate an understanding and basic practice of restorative justice into their work.
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