he Formerly Incarcerated Alum Giving Youth a Voice in Criminal Justice Reform
By Columbia Daily Spectator Staff / By Kelsea Petersen
By Georgia Fried — The Eye
After spending almost six years in prison, Jarrell Daniels was just a few short weeks away from being released when he began Social Factors and Psychopathology, a class at the Queensboro Correctional Facility taught by Columbia professor Geraldine Downey, and Lucy Lang, then the executive director of the Manhattan D.A. Academy.
The course focused on how human development and environmental contexts shape decision-making in young people and how understanding these influences could inform changes in the criminal justice system. The course not only gave Daniels college credit but also offered him the opportunity to help craft policy proposals that could enact tangible change for people currently incarcerated or reentering society after incarceration—including setting up a Department of Motor Vehicles office inside the Manhattan parole office and providing inmates at Queensboro Correctional Facility access to a computer lab. For the first time in his life, Daniels felt he was finally getting to see how he could make a positive impact on his community.
Two weeks into the course, just as he was becoming inspired and making connections, Daniels was released from prison. But despite finally gaining his freedom, he was determined to finish what he started. Daniels worked out a plan with the superintendent of the prison and his parole officer to return to Queensboro each week to complete the course.
“It didn’t matter that I just did six years, I knew that I had to see this thing through to the end,” Daniels said. After being released on a Thursday, he was back in Queensboro as a volunteer the following Tuesday, no longer in his prison uniform but finally in his own clothes.
After around three months of making the commute twice a week to and from Queensboro, Daniels finished the course with lingering questions: “Why did I have to come to prison before I got a chance to shape policy? Why did I have to come to prison before I was seen as an equal alongside prosecutors?”
Today, Daniels is the founder and director of Justice Ambassadors Youth Council, a program within Columbia’s Center for Justice. The program is designed to bring together youth and government officials to address a key problem Daniels had realized during the course he completed in Queensboro: Opportunities to engage with policy and leadership were often lacking for young people from vulnerable backgrounds and often only arose after they had entered the legal system.
It was during an internship at the Center for Justice that Daniels first crafted the proposal that would ultimately become the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council. Daniels was inspired by his personal experience with the legal system and his passion for youth education.
“I was fortunate enough, with the support of professor Downey, to be given a youth activist fellowship by the Open Society Foundation, and that fellowship supported me for 18 months to build out the Justice Ambassadors Youth Council.”
The program operates on three pillars: personal change, community change, and societal change. Through facilitated discussions, off-campus visits, and policy development sessions with government officials, the program encourages the skills and mindset that young people need to navigate challenges and effect positive change in their communities. The ultimate goal is to deter young people’s entrance into the criminal system while providing them with educational and career opportunities and shaping city government policy.
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