NYC Program Offers Criminals Art Lessons Instead of Jail Time
By Shant Shahrigian
New York Daily News
October 3, 2019
NEW YORK -- Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Now great artists busted for low-level crimes will be offered paint brushes instead of prison bars, thanks to a new city-backed program.
Under the nearly $4 million project, prosecutors and public defenders will give petty criminals the chance to opt for art appreciation sessions at sites including the Brooklyn Museum in lieu of going to court.
The goal is “ending a criminal justice system that turns minor offenses, minor crimes into lifelong problems,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at a Wednesday press conference at the Brooklyn Museum.
The City Council and de Blasio administration recently agreed to allocate $3.91 million total to the program, called Project Reset, following a trial run in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx.
About 200 people have completed the program at the Brooklyn Museum, where teachers take them to look at art, discuss it and then make works of their own in mediums including collage.
Participants in a trial run of the project were nearly 75% less likely to be convicted of a crime within a year of completing the program, according to a study by the Center for Court Innovation, which launched it.
“It definitely helped me avoid the anxiety of having to attend an actual court date for a mistake I made,” said program participant Jessy Singh.
“It helped to make me feel human in a system that often criminalizes people for the smallest of things,” she added.
Singh said she’d been caught with a friend who was shoplifting, though she declined to specify what she was arrested for. Now her record is clean thanks to the program.
People will be eligible for Project Reset for 15 non-violent misdemeanors including petit larceny and theft of services, graffiti, second-degree possession of drug paraphernalia and trespassing.
Artist Sophia Dawson, who is instructing groups at the Brooklyn Museum, said her sessions start with a viewing of Titus Kaphar’s painting “Shifting the Gaze.” Then she takes them to a room where they create collages using materials including newspaper headlines.
She said she challenges participants to “take on the authority as the artist."
“How can you take that authority, shift the gaze, switch the narrative, switch the perspective to say something that you want to say or cause the viewer to look at what you want them to see?” Dawson explained.
“We make a lot of mess,” she said.
The sessions last about 2.5 hours each, and some participants do follow-up counselling sessions.
The New Museum in Manhattan is also participating, according to Adam Mansky, director of the Center for Court Innovation. His organization launched Project Reset in partnership with the NYPD, the Brooklyn DA’s office, public defenders and the Brooklyn Museum.
Other than art, Project Reset offers group workshops on conflict and “identifying triggering factors” as an alternative to judicial proceedings for eligible people.
“It’s about holding people accountable but doing it in ways that promote human dignity, that help them think about their conduct and provide them with tools to contribute back to their community,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
Mansky hopes the Staten Island DA’s office will join the program by year’s end. He expects Queens to get on board, too, sometime after the next DA is elected in November.
Johnson declined to predict how many arrested people eventually will participate.
The project comes as sweeping criminal justice reforms are coming to the state starting Jan. 1, including new bail policies meant to reduce the number of people held in jail.
Last year, 271,630 people were arrested for misdemeanors in the city, according to NYPD stats. Johnson and Gonzalez declined to guess how many people would participate in Project Restart as it expands.
The Speaker asserted, “We say art instead of jail; culture instead of prosecution.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: When we came to America in 1936, our first home was in an apartment just two blocks from the Brooklyn Museum.
As for Project Reset, I’m sure the participants in the trial run were picked very carefully in order to ensure a good outcome so as to justify the program.
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