U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

From the Ground Up: Promising Criminal Justice Projects in the US and the UK

NCJ Number
238588
Author(s)
Aubrey Fox; Gavin Lockhart
Editor(s)
Blair Gibbs
Date Published
2012
Length
47 pages
Annotation
This report provides information on promising criminal justice projects in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Abstract
The Centre for Justice Innovation, a project of the Center for Court Innovation, works to improve how the criminal justice system functions in England and Wales. This paper examines an approach used in England and Wales that focuses on launching small, pilot projects that responds to specific local criminal justice problems and then patiently builds them up over time. Ten projects, used in the United States and the United Kingdom, are discussed in detail in this report. Information is provided on what makes the projects work, what challenges project administrators faced, and how the challenges were overcome. The success of the programs highlighted in this report show that more innovation is occurring at the local level by different stakeholders, such as the police, prosecutors, judges, and community groups, than by policymakers at the national level. The 10 programs discussed in the report are: 1) the Neighborhood Opportunity Network from the New York City Department of Probation; 2) SOS Gang Anti-Violence Initiative from the Crown Heights Community Mediation Centre, New York, NY; 3) Project Pegasus from the Violence Reduction Unit in Glasgow, Scotland; 4) IMPACT from Bristol, England; 5) Manchester, England's Intensive Alternatives to Custody Project; 6) Project Daedalus from London's Youth Reducing Re-offending Program; 7) the Harlem Parole Reentry Court in Harlem, NY; 8) the Integrated Domestic Violence Advisors and Multi-Agency Risk Conferences in Bristol, England; 9) HOPE Probation in Oahu, HI; and 10) Justice Reinvestment developed by the Kentucky Legislature and the Pew Center on the States.