News & Events
 

 

New Jersey Department of Labor Commissioner attends Women Build graduation, held by NJISJ

Monday, August 8, 2011

NEWARK, NJ - Commissioner Harold J. Wirths of the Department of  Labor and Workforce Development recently attended a graduation ceremony for graduates of the “Women Build” program held by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ).

Ten women who completed the eight-week, pre-apprenticeship course were issued certificates during a service held inside the PSE&G Building in Newark.

The administration of Governor Chris Christie, through the Department of Labor, awarded two $300,000 grants, one each to the NJISJ and the Hispanic Family Center, to pilot the Women Build program. The initiative serves low-income and low-skilled women by preparing them for entry into construction trades and nontraditional occupations.

To read more click here.

 

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NJISJ Executive Director, Cornell W. Brooks, testifies in front of the Equal Employment Oppportunity Commission regarding the barriers faced by the reentry population when seeking employment

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

WASHINGTON -- Employers often refuse to hire people with arrest and conviction records even years after they have completed their sentences, leading to recidivism and higher social services costs, experts told the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) at a meeting today at agency headquarters.
The meeting was part of a series convened by the EEOC to examine the implications of various hiring practices. In addition to laying out the scope of the issue, the meeting was designed to identify and highlight employers’ best practices, ways in which arrest and conviction records have been used appropriately, and current legal standards.

To read more click here.

 

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NJISJ argues the Juvenile Court has an obligation to address mistreatment of juveniles sentenced to juvenile detention

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice is participating as amicus curiae before the state Appellate Division in State ex rel. O.S., a case considering whether the State’s Juvenile Courts have the ongoing authority to review the conditions of confinement after youths are adjudicated delinquent and sentenced to state custody.

O.S. was repeatedly assaulted by other youths—so severely that his jaw was broken—and denied care while in the custody of the Juvenile Justice Commission.  He appealed to the juvenile court which had sentenced him, seeking to be moved to another facility.  The court refused to hear O.S.’s case, reasoning that it had authority over his sentencing but not the ongoing conditions of his confinement. 

Amici argue that the Juvenile Court has both the authority and the obligation to protect children like O.S. from abuse.  Upon sentencing, O.S. became a ward of the state and the Juvenile Court System undertook a duty to maintain his safety and security, as well as to promote his rehabilitation.  Without the ability to turn to the juvenile court, O.S. and youths like him would be left without meaningful legal recourse to address abuse.  The only available alternative, the internal grievance procedures, would require youths without the assistance of an attorney to bring their complaints to the very organization that they allege had denied them protection and treatment.

NJISJ and its Legal Program, via NJISJ’s Equal Justice Initiative, are committed to improving juvenile justice in New Jersey.  NJISJ believes that addressing the treatment and ensuring the rights of children sentenced to state custody is critical both to bettering the lives of these children and to addressing systemic criminal justice and urban poverty issues.

NJISJ is joined by amici the Rutgers Urban Legal Clinic, the Juvenile Law Center, the National Juvenile Defender Center, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, and Advocates for Children of New Jersey.

To read the Amicus brief, click here.

 

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Kyle Smiddie, NJISJ Intern, Headed for USDOJ Honors Program

 

Kyle Smiddie ’11 was raised to believe that what a person does for, and with, others who are less fortunate is the measure of that person’s worth. It was the lesson taught by his parents – a potter and a school psychologist – on their 45-acre farm in Appalachia, surrounded by a community marked by poverty and struggle. And it was the reason for his applying to the highly-competitive U.S. Department of Justice’s Honors Program, the only way for entry-level attorneys to join the DOJ.

Learning of his acceptance, Smiddie reacted with characteristic enthusiasm and humility. “I hope to make my father proud,” he said. “He worked for civil rights during the 1960s from the outside; I hope I can only do so much from the inside.”

Growing up in a community in which the poverty rate was 16% and only seven percent of the residents had a college degree, Smiddie saw early “how unfair America is to poor people.” The unmet need for advocates for the powerless such as childhood friends “whose only meal was the free lunch and whose only way out of the county was the military” was again made plain by an assignment during his senior year at Haverford College.

As he tells it: “I interviewed low-income people in laundromats to study their impressions of government. Their near-unanimous view can be summed up by the response of one customer, Bob, who described the powerlessness he felt: ‘They don’t care about us. I’m just here in my rinky-dink house, with my rinky-dink car and my rinky-dink life.’” The interviews were conducted for his senior thesis, titled “Why Poor People Don’t Participate in Politics,” which won the school’s Herman M. Somer Prize for best political science thesis.

After receiving his B.A., with honors, in political science, Smiddie spent two years completing service work with Haverford House, the Red Cross and AmeriCorps. He did community outreach for heating assistance programs in Philadelphia, helped Hurricane Katrina victims to rebuild their homes in New Orleans, and mentored foster kids in southeastern Ohio. Before coming to Rutgers, he also worked for the Ohio Fair Schools Campaign, organizing high school students to speak to their State representatives, and managed a candidate’s campaign for the Ohio legislature. “In each of these experiences,” he recalls, “I felt a sense of pride in watching the people I served become empowered to do things they might not have thought were possible.”

Smiddie had already decided to pursue a master’s degree in social work when some friends and family members “encouraged me to see that law school would give me more power to work for justice for people who often don’t have advocates.” In May he is scheduled to receive both a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark and a M.S.W. from the Rutgers School of Social Work.

Why Rutgers? The Rutgers Law School application “asked applicants to describe hardship experiences they had had during college, like raising kids or taking care of family members, or struggling with housing or poverty. That told me,” he explains, “that Rutgers was committed to serving students who were not simply the fortunate ones. And after hearing about the Minority Student Program that supported racial minorities and poor white students, I knew this was the environment where I wanted to come to learn about justice.”

At the law school Smiddie is New Jersey Developments Editor of the Rutgers Law Review and alumni liaison to the Moot Court Board. He has been awarded a New Jersey State Bar Foundation Scholarship, a Whitman Family Scholarship, and a Charles H. Revson Law Student Public Interest Fellowship. In 2009-2010, he was an Eagleton Fellow and worked in the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services as a Henry J. Raimondo Legislative Fellow.

In addition to thriving academically in the joint J.D./M.S.W. program, Smiddie has been an enthusiastic participant in the Minority Student Program (MSP) and in numerous public interest activities. Of the MSP he says: “The students in this program take on an identity that makes you feel like you have a family that is sharing the difficulty of law school together. 1L year was exhausting and it was hard at times to know what we were supposed to be doing. Having close friends to bounce ideas off of made everything much easier. I have also,” he adds, “gained a perspective on what it’s like to be marginalized in America just because of the color of your skin, even if you are privileged in other ways.”

As a 2L Smiddie was co-vice chair of the Public Interest Law Foundation, whose 2010 auction and other fundraising efforts enabled PILF to award grants to 11 students who accepted offers of unpaid summer public interest jobs. He also taught disadvantaged youth about the law and government as a volunteer in the Street Law program. Currently, he serves along with faculty, administrators, and alumni/ae on the board of the school’s Loan Repayment Assistant Program.

Looking back on his five completed semesters of law school, Smiddie cites hearing Equal Justice Initiative executive director Bryan Stevenson speak at the 2010 Rebellious Lawyering Conference about racial bias and representing death row inmates in the south as a particularly influential experience. “One statement that continues to ring in my ears is when he said that if we want to affect justice, we have to be willing to position ourselves in hopeless places and be a witness and say something. And because this work of saying something is going to make us ‘tired, tired, tired,’ we have to form an identity with others like us to create a community of justice seekers.”

Smiddie has furthered his practical experience in meeting the needs of the underserved as a legal and social work intern with the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, where he has written memoranda on federal abstention doctrine and prisoner re-entry laws in New Jersey and conducted workshops for ex-offenders.

In his application to the DOJ’s Honors Program, Smiddie wrote: “An opportunity to work for the Civil Rights Division would fulfill a dream I have been working towards for so long.” He cited the values with which he had been raised, the impression that the deprivation of his rural community had made, and the litigator on behalf of vulnerable populations that the U.S. Department of Justice would help him become.

Accepted into the program, Smiddie is “enthusiastic about the opportunity and humbled by the responsibility to represent the Justice Department.” And what aspect of his background in Appalachia, which has so clearly shaped his career goals, does he think will contribute most to his work at DOJ? “I saw the people in my hometown who are extremely hard workers. However, their skills, which had kept their families supported for years, don’t seem to work in our economy today because we don’t seem to need factory workers anymore. We don’t seem to need coal miners anymore. We don’t seem to need mill workers anymore. We have to,” he continues, “acknowledge their humanity and find ways, not to blame them for not fitting into the economy, but to make sure they are not cut off from new opportunities.”

 

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NJISJ Celebrates 5th Annual Awards Gala

 

Nanina's in the Park was the setting for the 5th annual awards dinner gala of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. Despite the rain, a record 315 supporters of the Institute and friends and family of four honorees were in attendance on June 9th, 2010. The Amy and Alan Lowenstein Social Justice Award was presented to Leonard Lieberman, dedicated philanthropist and founding supporter of NJPAC, the Boys and Girls Club of Newark, the Fund for New Jersey and former Chairman of the Board of Saint Barnabas Healthcare System.  Introducing Mr. Lieberman, Ray Chambers, Chairman of Amelior Foundation and a dedicated philanthropist and humanitarian, talked about how Alan Lowenstein had influenced him to commit fully and not partially and how that had changed his own life. He went on to say that "Len has played a similar role in my life. Working side by side with Len has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my life. He, too, has gotten so much done so quietly. The similarities between the two men are striking, and no one could ever deserve the Amy and Alan Lowenstein Award more than Len."

Marc Berson, of the Fidelco Group in Millburn, was the recipient of the Corporate Leadership Award, given to a corporate leader who has shown a concern for improving the lives of urban citizens and others. He, like Mr. Lieberman, is a dedicated philanthropist who gives much time to the boards on which he sits. He is the Chairman of the Saint Barnabas Healthcare System Board, was a founding member of NJPAC, and also the founder of Opportunity Project, an organization dedicated to helping brain-injured young people learn skills and live productive lives, to name just a few. Introducing Mr. Berson was Dr. Clement Price, Distinguished Rutgers Professor. He spoke of Marc's dedication to the city of Newark. "Put simply, as a result of Marc Berson the new energy in downtown Newark has moved north and west." Furthermore, Dr. Price said that, "his corporate leadership has been as varied as it has been heartening."

John J. Farmer, Jr., Esq., President of the NJISJ Board of Trustees, said of Berson and Lieberman, "they epitomize the best example of citizens interested in improving the lives of others, advancing the cause of social justice and giving generously of their time and resources."

Joe Jingoli, of Joseph Jingoli & Son Construction, received the Community Builder Award. Mr. Jingoli has partnered with the Institute to create real opportunities for people to enter the construction business, where they can earn higher wages and gain access to the middle class. Introduced by Matt Eventoff, Mr. Jingoli was moving in his description of his company's commitment to community. He said, "We have been committed to matching opportunity with well paying careers in communities in which we build. It was not until we were introduced to the Institute for Social Justice that we were able to put all of the pieces together to overcome all of the barriers to entry." In his role as CEO of Joseph Jingoli & Son, Mr. Jingoli has introduced innovative mentoring programs, minority participation programs, and educational programs that have been implemented with great success. One of the programs that Joe takes great pride in is the JJS Community Outreach program, built over a twenty-year period of time. Douglas S. Eakeley, Esq., founding trustee of NJISJ, said of Mr. Jingoli, "Joe's commitment to employing workers in the community where he is located is brilliantly sensitive to the needs of the citizens. Our partnership is extremely valuable to the Institute and the clients we serve. We salute Joe and are so pleased that the Institute has the opportunity to honor him."

The Lifetime Community Achievement Award was presented to Rebecca Doggett, who recently retired as NJISJ's much loved Senior Fellow. Honored for her pivotal role in the development of NJISJ's Economic Opportunity Initiative, Becky's multi-faceted career includes a series of 'firsts' that encompass critical positions in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Becky was Essex County's inaugural Director of the newly formed office of Citizen's Services, ensuring that services and resources were available to the county's most vulnerable families. Among her many firsts, Becky was the founding Executive Director of the Head Start Program and the Newark Preschool Council, and she served as the first black female executive at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Becky has provided guidance to many local and national organizations as a board member, including the Center for Community Change in Washington, D.C., the New Jersey Public Policy Research Institute, Leadership Newark and WBGO Jazz Radio, the nation's most widely recognized jazz radio station. Cornell William Brooks, Esq., Executive Director of NJISJ, said of Becky that, "she has been an outstanding leader of the community for decades, as well as a brilliant innovator of programs to help the poor and minorities. She was one of the organizers of efforts to empower black citizens in the cities of Orange and Newark during the 1960s and was an active participant in the civil rights movement." Becky, in accepting the Lifetime Community Achievement Award, thanked her many colleagues and friends "who have made each phase of my life's work an adventure." In closing, she said, "last but not least I must thank our ancestors, because they woke up every morning with their minds staying on Freedom. Therefore, we must wake up every morning with our minds staying on justice."   

The dinner was attended by many eminent members of the legal and political community, as well as family and friends who came to honor the four awardees. Music was provided by Alex Collins and Marcus Miller of NJPAC Education Arts Program. Large bowls of sunflowers made by Emerald Garden of Millburn graced the tables, and there was a festive atmosphere throughout the evening. Following the dinner and program, there was a sumptuous dessert party where people stayed to talk with fellow attendees and congratulate the honorees.  

 

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Hard Job Finding One

Sunday, May 23, 2010

BY GIOVANNA FABIANO

THE RECORD

STAFF WRITER

Each time Walter Burgess fills out a job application, he struggles with whether to check off the box indicating he is a convicted felon.

To read more click here.

 

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Douglas Eakeley, NJISJ Board Member, receiving the Learned Hand Award from the American Jewish Committee

April 21, 2010

The American Jewish Committee runs successful projects dedicated to improving interfaith relations, teaching about Israel to Christians, Holocaust education/prejudice reduction programs for students in public and private schools.
Each year, AJC honors a corporate leader with AJC's Institute of Human Relations Award and a prominent lawyer with the Learned Hand Award.

To read more click here.

 

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NJ Legislation Authorizes Municipal Courts to Provide Alternative Payments to License Suspension for Individuals

March 2, 2010

Legislation authorizing municipal courts to provide payment alternatives was enacted effective January 18, 2010. If a municipal court finds that a person does not have the ability to pay a penalty in full on the date of the hearing, the court may order the payment of the penalty in installments for a period of time determined by the court. This authorization provides municipal judges more discretionary power over license suspension fines and penalties.

To read more click here.

 

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Past Four Years Progress in Public Safety

April 1, 2010

Newark, NJ - April 1, 2010 - Mayor Cory A. Booker and Police Director Garry F. McCarthy announced today that the City is making great progress in creating a safer Newark, with a four-year 21 percent crime rate reduction; a 46 percent cut in shootings; and a 28 percent decrease in homicides. March is the first murder-free month the City has marked since 1966.

 

To read more click here.

 

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Smart Answers to Recidivism

The New York Times Editorial

December 24, 2009

 

Faced with soaring prison costs, states are finally focusing on policies that would help former prisoners stay out of jail after they are released. Some legislatures are reshaping laws that land parolees back inside for technical violations that should be dealt with on the outside. More than a dozen cities and counties have taken steps that make it easier for qualified ex-offenders to land government jobs, except in education and law enforcement and other sensitive areas from which people with convictions are normally barred by law.

 

To read more click here.

 

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Governor-Elect Chris Christie Announces Additional Transition New Jersey Sub-Comittee Members

November 25, 2009

TRENTON, NJ – Governor-Elect Chris Christie announced today additional  members of the Transition New Jersey sub-committees, including Corrections and Homeland Security, Energy and Utilities, Environmental Protection, Healthcare, Human Services and Children and Families, Law and Public Safety and Transportation. These sub-committees will conduct a top to bottom review of their respective government department and agency.

Executive Director Cornell William Brooks and NJISJ's Board of Trustees' members Al Koeppe, Jane Kinney and Richard Roper, all had the honor of participating in the transition team.

To read more click here.

 

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Former N.J. AGs back drug sentencing bill

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

NORTHJERSEY.COM

The Associated Press

 

(TRENTON) — Eight former attorneys general in New Jersey have put their names behind an effort to repeal mandatory minimum prison sentences in nonviolent drug cases.

The eight signed a letter to Gov. Jon Corzine and members of the Legislature on Tuesday urging passage of a bill giving judges the discretion to waive the mandatory sentences in certain drug cases. Mandatory minimums are applied in addition to a sentence handed down for a drug offense, and can add years to the length of a low-level drug offender's prison term.

To read more click here.

 

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Watson Coleman, Coutinho, Evans, Jasey, Spencer, Tucker Bills To Improve Rehabilitation Efforts In N.J. Prison Advance

November 23, 2009

By Thester

Bill Package Will be Designed to Save Taxpayer Money by Cutting Recidivism

(TRENTON) – A sweeping bill package sponsored by six Assembly Democratic legislators to improve rehabilitation in New Jersey prisons and to save taxpayer dollars by cutting recidivism and giving released inmates an improved chance of success was advanced Monday by an Assembly panel.

To read more click here.

 

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Prisoner Reentry Could Be On Legislators Lame Duck Menu

November 16, 2009

Advocates said they are confident the lame duck Legislature will take action of a series of bills designed to smooth the path from prison to society for ex-convicts. The bills are sponsored by Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D) and are the result of months of studying the employment challenges facing former offenders.

To read more click here.

 

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2009 Gala News

June 2009

On Wednesday, June 10th, 2009, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice celebrated its 10th Anniversary at its annual Awards Gala that took place at Nanina’s in the Park in Belleville, New Jersey. We welcomed more than 320 guests!

The four honorees were: Dr. Robert Curvin, renowned civil rights activist and distinguished fellow at Rutgers University; David Kerr, founder and president of Integrity House; Al Koeppe, president and CEO of the Newark Alliance; and the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey (HINJ), accepted by former New Jersey Congressman, Bob Franks, CEO of HINJ.

Following is all the media coverage surrounding this very special Gala event. 

New Jersey Institute for Social Justice gala honors decade of accomplishments

by Jamie Duffy/For the Star-Ledger

Friday, June 12, 2009

Institute of Social Justice honors Newark leaders at gala

by newjerseynewsroom.com

Sunday, 14, June 2009

Bob Franks accepts award on behalf of HealthCare Institute of New Jersey

by Somerset Reporter

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Integrity House founder receives Builder Award

by Glen Ridge Voice

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Short Hills lawyer chairs Social Justice Gala 

by Independent Press

Saturday June 27, 2009

 

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Driver's License Restoration Manual Updated

November 2008

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice is pleased to announce the release of the second edition of "Getting Back on the Road: A Manual for Addressing Driver’s License Suspension in New Jersey." ( November 2008). This resource provides a roadmap for New Jersey residents and their advocates navigating the state’s complex network of laws and regulations affecting driver’s license suspension. For a summary of the manual, please see this one pager: License Restoration Overview ().