The current employment upheaval, or the Great Resignation, reminds us that the opportunity to pursue meaningful and fulfilling work—something more than just a job—should extend to everyone. However, people who are formerly incarcerated are a group who often can only access employment with low pay, stress, and little opportunity for advancement. They are often locked out of careers because of a lack of educational credentials, training, or other systemic barriers.

The Youth Opportunity Hubs have brought important benefits to young people and their communities, including a greater sense of safety, well-being, and opportunity. For funders and policymakers who are looking to support young people and increase cross-sector collaboration, the evaluation of the Youth Opportunity Hubs initiative points to key lessons.

Across New York City, many young people are in need of youth-centered spaces that meet their diverse needs and draw on and lift up their strengths. Unfortunately, funding constraints of the social service system often lead to siloes between organizations, making it difficult for youth to access all of the services available to them. The Youth Opportunity Hubs, opened with CJII funding in 2017, were created to address these challenges and better serve young people.

Historically, organizational silos and constraints in funding opportunities have made it harder for organizations to build on and complement each others’ strengths to holistically serve youth in their communities—organizations tended to be funded to provide particular types of services (education, employment, etc.) and compensated based on those services being successfully delivered, not based on comprehensive supports for young people. The Youth Opportunity Hub initiative was designed to address these constraints and strengthen collaboration through funded partnerships.

The annual report of the Criminal Justice Investment Initiative shows that CJII has provided transformative support for thou­sands of people in New York by making significant community-based investments to keep people out of the criminal legal system and help make New York City safer.

New evaluation findings show that Sanctuary for Families’ Career Readiness Training Program is helping intimate partner violence survivors develop professional skills and improve their sense of self by expanding the capacity of its program to create pathways to financial independence.

Through its CJII-funded Deaf Services Initiative, over the past three years Barrier Free Living has improved its support for deaf survivors of abuse by expanding service offerings, enhancing its means of communication support and technology, and engaging community partners in deaf-specific trainings and resources.

Many survivors of domestic violence do not wish to engage with law enforcement, and yet some services available to them require showing proof of cooperation with the criminal legal system. As part of the City’s broad police reform agenda, ISLG is working to address these barriers and decouple the criminal legal system from essential services. As part of the City’s broad police reform agenda, ISLG is working to address these barriers and decouple the criminal legal system from essential services.

Criminal records follow people long after they have served their time and often end up as “permanent punishments.” This leads to many collateral consequences, including the significant impact a criminal record has in severely limiting housing options for people leaving incarceration.

Social enterprises—nonprofits that generate revenue to support their ongoing operations—present an innovative approach to workforce development, with the potential for systems-level impact. The Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII) funded the work of three growing social enterprises: Drive Change, The HOPE Program’s Intervine, and Sweet Generation Bakery.

October marks not only Domestic Violence Awareness Month, but also LGBTQ History Month, calling for us to acknowledge the intersection between this public health epidemic and this historically disadvantaged group.

The research presented in ISLG’s newly released report, Justice in Decision-Making: Studying Racial & Ethnic Disparities in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, represents a crucial first step towards developing a more holistic understanding of where racial and ethnic disparities exist in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s (DA’s) Office. This report is the culmination of a years-long partnership between ISLG and the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and highlights the value of these types of collaborations and what can be learned from them.