Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1

The Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions is located in the School of Professional and Community Development at Medgar Evers College in the City University of New York. The Center provides the college with a place where the study of the convergence of mass incarceration, mass unemployment and mass disenfranchisement of Black men and women can be conducted from the perspective of urban communities and people most impacted by this phenomena. Central to the inquiry are the implications of this phenomenon for inner city communities, families and institutions. 

The Center is the first and only public policy, research, training, advocacy and academic center, housed in the largest university system in the United States, conceived, designed and developed by formerly incarcerated professionals. It was established as an inter-disciplinary forum for scholars, policy makers, legal practitioners, law enforcement, civil society leaders, clergy and previously incarcerated professionals seeking to influence and impact urban contemporary criminal, economic and social justice issues.

The Center is dedicated to creating new paradigms for solving community development related criminal justice challenges in communities of color. It seeks to produce research that reveals the contradictions and confrontations within and among the various disciplines comprising the study of urban affairs and criminal justice and to develop new “community specific” models for academic inquiry and public policy.       

The Center is divided into seven major areas of inquiry:
(1) research and public policy
(2) faculty and curriculum development        
(3) program design, development, implementation and evaluation
(4) community education and training
(5)  technical assistance and capacity building
(6) forums, seminars, conferences and special events
(7) fellowships and internships.
 

The Center is an academic and training institution for the development and promotion of leadership among previously and currently incarcerated individuals, community residents and others seeking careers within the community development/criminal justice arena.  The primary goal of the Center is to produce scholars, scholarship and practitioners fully cognizant of the role of race and ethnicity in the field of community development as it relates to criminal justice and to provide analytic and research tools to navigate and articulate that role within the urban experience. 

CURRENT PROJECTS
             
Full Employment Opportunities Campaign - seeks to remove barriers that serve as bars to achieving full employment opportunities for people with criminal convictions who want to work. The campaign, developed as a national model, proposes reforming the legal impediments to acquiring and holding state professional and trade licenses.  It presents remedial legislation that streamlines the process by which people with criminal convictions can enter the labor market, eliminating administrative and bureaucratic barriers to employment, and provides for enhanced sanctions against employers who discriminate against this class. 

NuLeadership National Training Institute –  provides “community specific” and culturally competent training, program design and evaluation and technical assistance for individuals and organizations seeking federal and state contracts, foundation and other private  resources to work with currently or formerly incarcerated populations. Provides a wide range of technical assistance services through our capacity building initiative to community and faith-based organizations in the nation, as well as to social, health and governmental agencies,
           
NuUrban Marshall Plan – identifies vacant or underutilized city and state properties for community development and job creation; provides local residents recently released from prison -- along with other hard to employ populations – an opportunity to train and work on commercial, industrial and housing construction, public works, community service and special interest projects in their home communities. It identifies urban needs -- including physical infrastructure building, repair of roads, parks, communications, schools, energy, bridges, brownfields, vacant lots, abandoned buildings and other properties -- that expand the employment base and create new job opportunities. 

Black Judicial Forums -  provides a series of invitation only discussion forums for the Black legal and judiciary community to explore creating a new justice paradigm from the perspective of those most impacted.  Prepared papers, recorded presentations and other gathered materials will come out of this for publication.
           
Building Bridges -  provides a pre and post release transitional service model that links community, labor and faith based institutions in a joint discharge plan and neighborhood follow-up for access to health, social services and employment for people coming out of the prisons returning to urban communities.

Technical Assistance & Capacity Building Services

For further information contact:
Divine Pryor, Deputy Executive Director
Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions
School of Professional and Community Development
Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York
1637 Bedford Avenue, SBSS 220-32
Brooklyn, New York 11225
718-270-5136 office
dpryor@mec.cuny.edu