The Center for Court Innovation

The Center for Court Innovation seeks to help create a more effective and humane justice system by designing and implementing operating programs, performing original research, and providing reformers around the world with the tools they need to launch new strategies.

Founded as a public/private partnership between the New York State Unified Court System and the Fund for the City of New York, the Center creates operating programs to test new ideas and solve problems. The Center’s projects include community-based violence prevention projects, alternatives to incarceration, reentry initiatives, court-based programs that seek to promote positive individual and family change, and many others.

The Center disseminates the lessons learned from innovative programs, helping justice reformers around the world launch new initiatives. The Center also performs original research evaluating innovative programs to determine what works (and what doesn't). 

The Center for Court Innovation grew out of a single experiment; the Midtown Community Court was created in 1993 to address low-level offending around Times Square. The project’s success in reducing both crime and incarceration led the court’s planners, with the support of New York State’s chief judge, to establish the Center for Court Innovation to serve as an ongoing engine for justice reform in
New York. 

The Center has received numerous awards for its efforts, including the Peter F. Drucker Award for Non-Profit Innovation, the Innovations in American Government Award from Harvard University and the Ford Foundation, and the Prize for Public Sector Innovation from the Citizens Budget Commission.