Boys to Men
Tapping Family Strengths to End Cycles of Involvement in the Justice System
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Young Men at Risk: Transforming the Power of a Generation competition.
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Year the initative began (yyyy)
1996
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Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Market failures and shakeups displace young men’s opportunities
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Change surrounding cultures to create a society that values and enriches young people’s transition to adulthood
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic:
This field has not been completed
Name Your Project
Boys to Men: Tapping Family Strengths to End Cycles of Involvement in the Justice System
Describe Your Idea
Describe your program or new idea in one sentence.
Family Justice taps the natural strengths of families that helps empower young men involved in the justice system to lead healthier lives.
What makes your initiative uniquely positioned to create change in your community?
Family Justice’s unique organizational focus is not limited to the consequences for individuals convicted of a crime, but on entire families that have a loved one involved in the criminal justice system. By and large, criminal justice issues are public health issues, and by definition, serious multigenerational health concerns take a dramatic toll on families.
Challenging traditional punitive approaches to justice and offering cost-effective alternatives, Family Justice actively pursues partnerships beyond the citizen sector, enlisting as strategic allies law enforcement and corrections agencies often considered antagonists by those who seek to improve the conditions and societal image of young men.
Family Justice’s unique approach combines concurrent systemic and individual change – a vital intervention at this historical moment and with the population of young people as the disparities in treatment based on an intersection of race and class are most apparent among youth in the justice system.
Describe how you organize and carry out your work?
Family Justice is committed to changing the justice system to address one important challenge facing families living in poverty. The work is organized into three areas: advocacy, education, and research. The development of strength-based, family-focused case management tools—collectively called the Bodega Model—occurs in interaction with our two direct-service centers, where case workers test innovations on the ground and trainers bring this education across the country. Research helps Family Justice tailor our training and justify cultural change.
What is your plan to scale and expand your innovation into your community and beyond?
The Family Justice approach involves leveraging strengths that already exist within families and extended social networks; our organization helps create ways and means of accessing untapped resources, instead of building entirely new systems that bring about and sustain change. Apart from being very cost-effective, this allows Family Justice to be a catalyst for change while leaving the ongoing work of changing practice in the criminal and juvenile justice systems to the agencies already engaged in this work. At a practical level, the method of expanding this innovative approach involves working collaboratively with government and community based agencies to identify the needs for a change in practice and then to plan for and implement the right mix of training and technical assistance that will help each organization gain the necessary knowledge, systems, and networks they need to sustain their local/regional change effort. Feedback from evaluations has recently lead to the development of an online learning community and development of new training efforts directed towards mid-managers.
What other resources, institutional, or policy needs would be necessary to help sustain and scale up your idea?
To date, the Bodega Model® has proven effective in a diverse range of settings—small and rural areas, indigenous communities and large urban centers in the United States. The approach is ready to be brought to scale through collaboration with initiatives around the globe. Real-time communication is key to this process. The development of internet capacity in countries with fewer resources would be imperative to Family Justice's expansion in a cost-effective manner. Conferences on Family Justice training and practices would also propel our expansion. Conferences and web-based communication would afford people the space to discuss approaches with one another and capitalize on experiential learning.
Concrete methods of measurement, such as social return on investment and institutionalization of our new database tool, would spur research with family as the unit of analysis. Placing families at the center will have a broader impact on sentencing policies, incarceration, parole, and probation.
Describe your impact in one sentence, commenting on both the individual and community levels.
Tapping the strengths of young men and their families, youth recognize and unlock their potential and help make communities stronger and safer.
What impact has your work achieved to date?
Since its founding in 1996, Family Justice has emerged as a leading national citizen sector dedicated to developing innovative, cost-effective solutions that benefit people at greatest risk of cycling in and out of the justice system. Through advocacy, education, and research, we offer a range of systemic interventions that address complex issues of people living in poverty. By providing extensive training and support to government agencies and community-based organizations, Family Justice helps families to unlock their potential to lead healthier and more productive lives. Our signature methods are adopted by growing numbers of strategic partners, for example the Department of Corrections in Ohio and Michigan and juvenile systems in California and New Jersey. We continue to innovate by learning from all of the experts—governmental and non-governmental workforces, families, and the neighborhoods they are connected to.
Number of individuals served
Family Justice has provided family case management to over 3,000 families and 12,000 individuals, many of them young men. During six months of participation in family case management, the arrest rate among people under supervision was 11%, in contrast to 21% among a comparison group. Teaching people that families are part of the solution, Family Justice trains professionals in fields such as public health, social services, education, law enforcement, and corrections about its signature method, The Bodega Model. Family Justice has trained over 1,000 professionals since launching its educational initiatives. In 2006-2007, the number of staff who received training and technical assistance was twice the previous year's enrollment. The demand to learn about Family Justice's cost-effective, easily adaptable methods continues to rise dramatically.
Community impact
As Family Justice works with communities and systems across the United States, approaches to traditional services are recognizing the benefits of tapping family strengths. Family Justice's impact on the Lower East has been recognized by Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government for innovations in American Government. But nothing is stronger than the words of the participants at our direct-service centers. One participant said, "Our first meeting at La Bodega was the first time that anyone had asked me why I hurt and what I might need." Family Justice has grown beyond the impact we have in one urban community and now we can say that we are impacting the country. Partnerships with powerful institutions such as American Probation and Parole Association and the National Institute of Corrections, has propelled Family Justice onto the national movement for cultural change within the U.S. justice system.
Society at large
If we truly want to promote health, safety, and well-being, we must not passively let the effect of criminal justice involvement take its course across generations; we must act decisively. A participant in on of our innovative trainings reflected on her experience with the work of Family Justice, "It makes you look at an inmate as a person, not as a number... we always look at them as numbers, or as a group." Family Justice is proving itself a catalyst for cultural change.
What measure do you use to gauge your impact and why?
Our research and evaluation staff utilize survey instruments, focus groups, and semi-structured interviews to collect self-report and observational information of the effectiveness of our training, technical assistance and direct service. Additionally, we are currently planning for long term social impact assessment to examine the sustained impact of our work within the field of corrections and planning an evaluation project utilizing community action research methodology to examine the impact of collaborating with a public housing authority to improve community and family well being.
This Entry is about (Issues)
How is your initiative currently being financed and how would you finance further expansion and/or replication?
The implementation of the Family Justice approach around the United States is currently financed through three different funding streams—government support to pilot new efforts and expand existing ones, contract work to support individual or groups of agencies, and private foundation grants to support innovations and capacity building efforts. Since Family Justice is currently in the capacity building phase of its strategic expansion efforts, it is imperative to secure from additional private foundations, corporations, and individuals. This will complement the main funding that we are able to access through government grants and contract work, but which does not pay for the building of an organization’s capacity to provide more and higher quality work.
Provide information on your current finances and organization:
a. Our annual budget is $3,438,513.
b. Our annual revenue is $3,475,360.
c. Federal Grants 1,058,721 (30.46%); New York State and City Contracts 1,153,000 (33.18%); Training and Technical Assistance Contracts 268,950 (7.74%); Foundation Grants 815,189 (23.46%); Corporate and Individual 160,000 (4.60%); Other 19,500 (0.56%).
d. 25 full-time employees; 7 part time employees; 1 volunteer.
Who are your potential partners and allies?
Family Justice actively pursues partnerships beyond community-based social service and reentry organizations, enlisting as strategic allies law enforcement and corrections agencies often considered antagonists by those who seek to improve the conditions and societal image of young men. We collaborate directly with numerous federal, state, and local agencies, including prisons, jails, and parole and probation departments. Around the country, these agencies are realizing the benefits of looking beyond deficits and implementing strength-based, family-focused approaches. Family Justice offers concrete tools to affect such change.
Who are your potential investors?
Potential investors in Family Justice include a very broad group—individuals and groups interested in increasing the well-being of families and in making communities safer, in a cost-effective way. So far, we have been very successful in engaging private foundations and government entities. We have been less successful in securing support from corporations and individuals, but we consider them great possibilities for future support.
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
Like most founders, I began with a dream that soon became a vision: We must tap the strengths of young men and their families to stop the cycles of crime, incarceration, victimization, poor education, and poverty that deplete a generation of young men and entire neighborhoods. This idea led to crucial questions: Could we get law enforcement agencies to become our partners in a new strength-based approach? And together, could we shift from a focus on the individual to a view that embraces young men’s social networks and communities? In 1996, we developed and tested a family support model at La Bodega de la Familia, a small New York City storefront where just months before, a police officer was shot and an alleged drug dealer was killed. There, we introduced new methods to engage families struggling with addiction or mental illness and helped prevent loved ones from going to jail. Independent evaluations of our work show that outcomes improve when law-enforcement and community-service providers leverage the strengths of people’s social networks. We continue to bring these lessons to scale in the criminal justice field through training and technical assistance. We devise, adapt, and test curricula and tools to help partner organizations improve skills and broaden their focus to include families and neighborhoods. And our approach worked! Today, growing numbers of strategic partners across the country are adopting Family Justice’s signature methods. To meet the rising demand for our advocacy, education, and research initiatives, we invite new partners to join us.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material.
Carol Shapiro, founding director and president, is a nationally known innovator in the justice field. Over the past 30 years, she has devised numerous approaches to improving public safety and family well-being in the fields of drug abuse, mental health, housing, and law enforcement. Carol has been recognized for her work by being named an Ashoka Innovator for the Public Fellow, as a Join Together Fellow and as one of ten Women to Watch from Jewish Women International.
 | mst fms said: Thank you very much for this information. Good post thanks for sharing. I like this site ;) ----------- ps3 oyun satış ps3 oyun ... about this idea. - 58 days ago read more > |
| Martha Miravete Cicero said: Estimada Carol...Quiero decirte que el haber contactado con Family Justicie, nos ha hecho ver que no estamos solos en esta lucha y en ... about this idea. - 247 days ago read more > |
 | Boys to Men: Tapping Family Strengths to End Cycles of Involvement in the Justice System has been chosen as a finalist in Young Men at Risk: Transforming the Power of a Generation. - 753 days ago |
| Carol Shapiro said: One strong indication of the power of shifting mindsets to include family is the perspective of probation officers. Consider the story ... about this idea. - 794 days ago read more > |
| Carol Shapiro said: Hi Dana, Thank you for the response and for your support. Family Justice strives to center the family as the unit of analysis, and thus ... about this idea. - 794 days ago read more > |
| Dana Frasz said: Hello Carol, Fantastic work. It is really great to see your focus on not just the individual but the whole family unit. I understand ... about this idea. - 798 days ago read more > |
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