Mission Statement
The Osborne Association offers opportunities for individuals who have been in conflict with the law to transform their lives through innovative, effective, and replicable programs that serve the community by reducing crime and its human and economic costs.
We offer opportunities for reform and rehabilitation through public education, advocacy, and alternatives to incarceration that respect the dignity of people and honor their capacity to change as they achieve self-sufficiency, adopt healthy lifestyles, enter the workforce, form and rebuild families, and rejoin their communities.
Description
The Osborne Association operates a broad range of treatment, educational, and vocational services for people involved in the criminal justice system, including incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, their children, and other family members. We serve more than 6, 000 people annually in community sites and courthouses in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, as well as in more than seventeen state prisons and on Rikers Island. Our program models demonstrate that employment and family services, chemical dependency treatment, access to HIV/health care, and constructive and supervised alternatives to incarceration can reduce crime, decrease violence, and address the concerns of victims.
The Osborne Association has over 150 staff members and some 40 volunteers, more than 80% of whom are African-American, Caribbean-American, Latino, and Asian, and many of whom are former prisoners, people in recovery, and people living with HIV/AIDS.
In January 2001, the Osborne Association merged with The South Forty Corporation, the oldest employment organization in New York State exclusively for individuals involved in the criminal justice system. South Forty Employment and Training Services, now a major program of the Osborne Association, places hundreds of men and women into jobs annually.
