Social Worker, Misdemeanor Alternatives to Incarceration

THE ORGANIZATION

The Center for Justice Innovation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing community safety and racial justice. Since 1996, we’ve worked alongside communities, courts, and those most directly affected by the justice system to build stronger, healthier, and more equitable neighborhoods. With a team of over 900 staff and an annual budget of $130 million, the Center carries out its mission through three core strategies:

1. Operating Programs that pilot new ideas and address local challenges;
2. Conducting original research to evaluate what works—and what doesn’t; and
3. Providing expert assistance and policy guidance to reformers across the country and beyond.

Backed by decades of on-the-ground experience and nationally recognized expertise, we bring innovative, practical, and lasting solutions to justice systems nationwide.
Learn more about our work at www.innovatingjustice.org.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Manhattan Justice Opportunities seeks to rethink justice in Manhattan and build a justice system that is more responsive to individuals’ and communities’ needs. Manhattan Justice is a centralized, court-based screening, resource, and referral hub that provides judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys at New York County Criminal Court and Supreme Court with a wide array of social service-based sentencing options in misdemeanor and felony cases. Manhattan Justice offers onsite case management, psycho-educational groups, and restorative justice programming, and provides referrals to community-based service providers for mental health, substance use, employment, primary health care services and more. These services, which are open to anyone who needs them—including mandated participants’ families and friends, and others affected by the criminal justice system—help people address underlying issues in their lives, build stability, and decrease their likelihood of further justice involvement. 

Manhattan Justice is seeking a Social Worker to engage and assess program participants and connect them to a full range of wraparound services, including, community-based social services and evidence-based interventions. Reporting to the Clinical Supervisor, the Social Worker will be responsible for conducting assessments and intakes, making referrals to community-based service providers, offering comprehensive trauma-informed case management and individual counseling sessions, facilitating psychoeducational groups, and providing compliance monitoring for people with open misdemeanor and felony cases.

An essential and dynamic feature of the Social Worker’s role will be close collaboration with the Manhattan Misdemeanor Alternative to Incarceration Court, a new problem-solving court.  The Social Worker will assess and prepare treatment recommendations for potential participants and provide long-term care coordination and compliance monitoring for a caseload of participants. Court-based social work is an exciting, unique, and demanding area of practice, and the Social Worker role involves navigating and constructively engaging with differing and, at times, competing stakeholder perspectives. 

Responsibilities include but are not limited to: 

• Conduct intakes and clinical assessments for mandated and voluntary program participants; 
• Develop treatment recommendations for potential participants to be shared with court stakeholders (judge, defense counsel, prosecutor and court staff), when necessary; 
• Provide comprehensive, clinically-informed case management and individual counseling services to a caseload of participants charged with misdemeanor and felony offenses;  
• Facilitate and help to develop and/or revise curricula for a range of on-site psychoeducational groups and individual case management sessions; 
• Provide referrals to community-based services that address issues such as substance use, mental health issues, trauma, domestic violence, housing, and educational/vocational needs; and other challenges in participants’ lives (e.g. family court cases and other civil legal issues); 
• Manage and monitor compliance with treatment mandates, including care coordination with providers; 
• Provide written and verbal compliance reports to legal parties and coordinate responses to non-compliance issues, including re-engaging participants and arranging return on warrants;  
• Provide crisis intervention and de-escalation, as needed; 
• Assist with outreach to participants and defense attorneys to ensure all mandated participa