Engaging Young People: The Center helps young people learn more about the judicial branch and how it affects our daily lives.

• Youth Courts: The Center is working with the Association of New York State Youth Courts to establish best practices, a training program, technical assistance and enhanced judicial participation to expand on the work of approximately 100 active youth courts throughout New York State. The Center hosted a day-long Summit in November 2007 for youth court staff around the state.
  
  
• Attendance Courts: The Center is working with the City of New York to pilot two attendance courts designed to promote and enforce school attendance for students with persistent attendance issues. The pilots have been operating at  P.S. 27 in Red Hook, Brooklyn and the Isaac Newton Junior High School in Harlem since fall 2007.
  
  
• MyCourtsNY: The Center has created a website that highlights youth outreach activities across New York State. It can be found by clicking here.

Tools for Educators: The Center seeks to help educators bring civic education into the classroom by facilitating volunteer opportunities for judges and creating a more systematic, statewide collaboration between judges and teachers.

• Roundtable on Civic Education in our Schools: In 2007, the Center gathered judges, policymakers, bar leaders, educators and school administrators in Buffalo for a roundtable discussion to assess and find ways to expand on judicial participation in New York schools’ civic education curriculum.  The Center continues to work with this group to build on their recommendations and intends in 2008 to convene similar groups in other jurisdictions across New York. 

Tools for Judges: While many judges interact easily and often with the public, others have less opportunity and experience doing so. The Center is developing resources to help fortify judges’ abilities to reach out to communities effectively.

• Judicial Toolkit: In 2008, the Center will create a basic how to document to help judges at a glance understand not only what types of community outreach are and are not permissible under the canons of judicial ethics, but also give them examples of outreach strategies that have worked in the past.
  
  
• Outreach Training: The Center intends to create an "effective communications techniques" training module to present to new judges as part of their basic training.

Informing the General Public: Judges and courts across New York State are committed to educating local communities and addressing their needs. The Center is helping spread the word of the judiciary’s efforts.

• Opening Courthouse Doors: The Center for Courts and the Community is working on a report, to be published in 2008, that will pull together in a single document innovative community outreach work currently underway across New York State.  It will be a resource for all New York court employees - and for the public.  It will describe all of the public engagement work in New York State - from Law Day activities to mentoring programs to speakers bureaus to volunteer initiatives.  It will include detailed descriptions of representative counties and will profile exemplary programs.
  
  
• Court Narratives: Stories about how courts help New Yorkers change and grow daily rarely reach the general public. The Center recently published Drug Courts: Personal Stories, a compilation of narratives from people who have successfully completed drug treatment court programs across New York State, the first in a series of books describing the positive impacts that courts have had on the lives of New Yorkers.  

Jacqueline Sherman, the Director of the Center for Courts and the Community, can be reached at 212.716.1362 or jsherma2@courts.state.ny.us.