DA launches grants for youth services, crime prevention
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A new grant from the DA’s office will support youth services and crime prevention programs, including the Rockaway Community Justice Center. File photo via Queens Defenders
By Jacob Kaye
Nearly 30 organizations in Queens have been named as recipients of a new grant from the Queens district attorney’s office designed to fund youth development and crime prevention programs.
District Attorney Melinda Katz named 28 Queens organizations last week that will each be the recipient of a $50,000 grant to help implement Katz’s Community Youth Development and Crime Prevention Project.
The program, which will be administered by the grant winners, aims to provide youth activities and wrap around services in an effort to keep kids out of the criminal justice system, according to Katz.
“Providing meaningful opportunities for our youth is a keen investment in public safety and the future of Queens County,” Katz said in a statement. “We have to do all we can to make sure that our kids are equipped to make good choices and empowered to steer clear of gangs, guns and crime.”
“My office is committed to working with the community to develop mentorship, recreational, academic and career development activities in our borough,” she added. “The Queens Community Youth Development and Crime Prevention Program will help empower our youth while increasing public safety.”
The grants will be distributed to a diverse group of organizations across the borough. While many of the organizations will offer services to children and teens, the populations they will serve and the way in which they do it will differ.
Queens Defenders, a legal services provider in the borough, was one of the grant’s recipients and will direct the funds toward existing youth programs in the organization.
The funds will support Queens Defenders’ Rockaway Community Justice Center – home to a number of programs aimed at teens, most notably its alternative community court.
The restorative justice court has a panel of community members that hears low level and misdemeanor cases sent to them by the Queens district attorney's office – the court was created in collaboration with the DA’s office last year.
“[The panel will] issue a sanction but it won't be like picking up garbage, it's more restorative,” said Brian Schatz, director of communications at Queens Defenders. “What we want is for them to learn skills – if they're interested in becoming a barber, we link them up with a barbershop where they can do a couple of hours there and help build social capital and help make connections that could potentially lead towards a job.”
The center also helps young people brushing up against the criminal justice system get an ID if they don’t already have one, help them with their resume, help them with a housing issue or any other issue that may increase their likelihood of falling back into the criminal justice system.
“We explore what it is that they want to do, and then develop a plan on how they can actually achieve that,” Schatz said.
The Variety Boys & Girls Club of Astoria was also one of the recipients of the grant, which will go toward a relatively new teen center at the organization, according to CEO and former City Councilmember Costa Constantinides.
The teen center was launched just as the pandemic began in 2020 and its development stalled. The funds will help relaunch the center, Constantinides said.
“We're in the process of building it back up and providing teens a place to go to be themselves to hang out,” Constantinides said, adding that the center will also begin to build up a college readiness program.
Offering teens and young adults a place to go and a path to a future they may have not yet considered could help prevent them from ever engaging with the criminal justice system in the first place, many of the grant recipients told the Eagle.
“When you're giving young people opportunity, when you're showing them possibilities into the future, when you're talking about hope – you instill in them that hope and a desire for that better future,” Constantinides said. “It teaches them life skills and ways that they can resolve conflict without violence and it empowers them to seek their dreams.”
Cedric Dew, the executive director of the Greater Jamaica YMCA, said that the funds his organization received will be used to fund a mentorship program, an audio visual program and others.
“When you create an opportunity for them to be exposed, whether you take them to see a Broadway play for the first time or to a St. John's basketball game….it opens their eyes up to possibility,” Dew said. “That's what we really want to do, we want to open their eyes up to possibility because once they have that possibility in their spirit, it changes how they think, it changes how they function, it changes their decision making.”
The DA’s office said the program aims to “facilitate a collaborative and community-driven approach that will foster positive relationships between the community and law enforcement, reduce youth crime, improve self-confidence among young people, increase exposure to positive adult role models, as well as improve academic performance and school attendance.”
The Queens Community House will use some of its funds to support programming that connects young people with local law enforcement.
“We're really excited about all of this – we feel that this will put us in a position to strengthen relationships in the community between youth and institutions like law enforcement,” said Patrick Pinchinat, the community center director at Queens Community House. “Very often, young people just do not have opportunities to engage in the right way, so, they're the street, they're involved in different things that may not always be positive and may lead to crime and violence and things like that.”
“But we know that if young people are engaged, and we support them around all their needs, and kind of guide and facilitate that process, then there's more of a chance that they're going to be successful.”
