A Trip to Crown Heights

I spent part of the afternoon today in Crown Heights, where the Mediation Center is on a roll.  In addition to the recent article in the Daily News about Ife, Amy and the rest of the staff there are cooking up a bevy of activity for the fall, including a new youth court, a reentry resource guide, leadership training for local residents and mediation training in schools.  Amy, in her usual gentle way, chided me for not having linked to Crown Heights new blog.  So, here it is. 

The other highlight of my day was a phone call with Louise Casey, a cabinet level official in the Brown administration in the UK.  She filled me in on a sweeping criminal justice reform agenda that she is spearheading, including a number of reforms -- an emphasis on community restitution as a response to minor offending, efforts to involve local residents in the process of doing justice -- that are very similar to things we are working on in NYC.