YNY | Art Not Jail | 2018 Silent Auction,

About the event

Each spring Young New Yorkers (YNY) hosts a Silent Art Auction to fundraise for our Restorative Arts Diversion Programs and bring our community together around our central mission. Our first 8-Week Art Diversion Program in 2012 was fully funded by our inaugural Silent Art Auction, and six years later the Silent Art Auction remains a critical source of YNY’s funding.

YNY’s Silent Art Auction brings together cultural ambassadors, street artists, activists, art lovers, graduates of YNY programs, and the very criminal justice professionals involved in their sentencing for a night of celebrating all that our community has been able to accomplish in the past year.

This year, we are holding out ART NOT JAIL Silent Art Auction on April 25th from 6-11pm at 107 Norfolk Street, New York, NY.

Why should you sponsor?

Young New Yorkers (YNY) is a Brooklyn-based nonprofit committed to bringing positive systemic change to the ways that teens and young adults are prosecuted in NYC. Through YNY’s arts-based diversion programs, the young people sentenced to us first avoid jail, swiftly exiting the criminal justice system without incurring a lifelong criminal record, and second, become advocates for themselves and for a transformed legal system. Participants design and host art exhibitions exploring criminal justice issues and invite the justice professionals involved in their sentencing to attend. Bringing young people and court professionals together in this context humanizes the culture of the courtrooms, the members of which possess discretionary power over each young person’s case outcome.

In 2018, our goal is to raise $90,000. The cost for a young person- from sentencing to the art program, to advocating at the final court date- is between $500 and $1,000.

Rachel Barnard

Young New Yorkers (YNY) provides arts-based, transformative-justice programs to court-involved 16- and 17-year olds, with the ultimate goal of empowering participants to transform the criminal justice system through their own creative voices. Whether for one day or eight weeks, each program culminates in an exhibition of the participants' artworks, giving members of the criminal justice system an opportunity to re-meet these extraordinary young people beyond their rap sheets. At the completion of our programs, the vast majority of our participants' cases are sealed, leaving them free of an adult criminal record at as young as 16 years old. 

Young New Yorkers has established partnerships with several agencies within the criminal justice system, including: Kings County Criminal Court, Red Hook Community Court, Kings County District Attorney’s Office, Brooklyn Defender Services, the Legal Aid Society, the American Bar Association's Racial Justice Task Force, the Center for Court Innovation, and the New York City Department of Probation (Brooklyn).

“This multi-agency effort to turn Criminal Court into a positive experience in a young person's life is very promising.” Honorable Judge George A. Grasso commenting on YNY's 1-Day Arts Diversion Program.

“We are proud to be part of this innovative program, which is in keeping with our agency-wide effort to improve public safety by providing services and sanctions that are targeted to each probation client’s unique risks and needs." Vincent Schiraldi, Former NYC Department of Probation Commissioner.

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