Danielle Mindess News Today

Black New Yorkers face the most low-level charges. Minor arrests declined in the city from 101,881 in 2016 to 48,300 in 2022.

The Midtown Community Court was founded 30 years ago as a “problem-solving court” designed to unjam the city’s jails and courtrooms by providing social services and other programming to low-level criminal offenders in lieu of more serious penalties. Since then, courts following similar models have quietly spread to almost every state in the country, and plans for even more are in the works.