Osborne Association: In the Business of Transformation
The Osborne Association (New York) 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. The Osborne Association offers opportunities for reform and rehabilitation through public education, advocacy, and alternatives to incarceration that respect the dignity of people.
In 1913, Thomas Mott Osborne, an industrialist and former mayor of Auburn, New York, spent a week in Auburn prison as prisoner Tom Brown, #33,333x. He lived just as other prisoners did and left that harrowing experience committed to the goal of turning America's prisons from "human scrap heaps into human repair shops." Mr. Osborne went on to become a progressive warden at Sing Sing, where the majority of his prisoners did not return to prison after release. Later he founded the Mutual Welfare League and the National Society of Penal Information, Mr. Osborne became known as the "pioneer and prophet of prison reform." The Osborne Association was established in 1931 to continue his work.
Today, the Osborne Association furthers its founder’s goal of a criminal justice system that "restores to society the largest number of intelligent, forceful, honest citizens" by providing a broad range of treatment, education, and vocational services to more than 5,500 people each year, including people who are currently or formerly incarcerated, their children, and other family members. Programs are offered in community sites in New York (Bronx, Brooklyn, and Dutchess County), as well as in courts, jails and state prisons.
Programs
By transforming the lives of those involved in the criminal justice system, the Osborne Association's programs demonstrate that there are policies and procedures our nation can adopt that can foster a more effective and efficient criminal justice system and a safer and more just society. They believe that relying only on imprisonment as a response to crime is a costly and counterproductive approach that fails to take into account people's basic capacity to change.
The Osborne Association is in the business of transformation through promoting healthy lifestyles, working with their clients to achieve economic independence, easing the transition from prison to the community, advocating for alternatives to incarceration, reconnecting families or strengthening communities.
Adopting Healthy Lifestyles
Osborne’s prevention and treatment services provide a holistic approach to managing health-related challenges, including drug/alcohol/tobacco use, chronic health conditions, and mental illness. Based on a comprehensive assessment, individuals are offered services that provide an appropriate level of care and support. Osborne’s services are evidence-based, utilizing cognitive behavioral interventions and approaches specific to criminal justice involvement.
Reconnecting Families
Osborne’s family-centered approach recognizes the central role of family and social networks in reaching the desired outcomes of all of our programs. The Reconnecting Families programs are described in the section below.
Achieving Economic Independence
Osborne’s Workforce Development programs offer comprehensive employment and training services to people with criminal records, including vocational and educational assessments, career counseling, job readiness workshops, resume preparation, skills enhancement (including GED prep and hard skills training), job search and placement assistance in the Green and Food Services sectors, with follow-up support to assist participants to adjust to workplace demands.
Reducing Reliance on Incarceration
Currently, there are more than 2 million men and women incarcerated in the United States – the highest incarceration rate in the world! The Osborne Association believes that relying only on imprisonment as a response to crime is a costly and counter-productive approach that fails to take into account people's basic capacity to change. Osborne employs effective measures that reduce incarceration and recidivism rates. This not only benefits the individual, but also keeps communities safer.
Strengthening Communities
The Osborne Association advocates for systemic reforms that divert people from incarceration to treatment, provide effective programs during incarceration that prepare people to return home, and remove barriers to community and family reintegration upon release.
Reconnecting Families
FamilyWorks
FamilyWorks enables incarcerated fathers to make, mend and maintain relationships with their children through a comprehensive fatherhood program including parenting education and family counseling in city and state correctional facilities, child-oriented Family Centers in prison visiting rooms, and community-based services for families. Courses in Healthy Relationships for men and Healthy Marriage for committed couples – in prison settings or shortly after release – enhance FamilyWorks’ inclusive and proven approach to strengthening families.
Family Resource Center
The Family Resource Center and Hotline offers families and friends of people in prison a toll-free hotline staffed by formerly incarcerated individuals and family members, providing information, referrals, peer support and counseling as well as support groups, during incarceration and following release.
Family Ties
Family Ties facilitates visits for children and their mothers at Albion Correctional Facility, New York’s largest women’s prison, offering parenting skills courses to incarcerated mothers, visiting support for their children, and family cohesion support upon release. Family Ties also offers “tele-visiting” for children when they cannot see their mothers in person.
Children & Youth Services
Children and Youth Services supports young people with incarcerated parents overcome stigma and isolation achieve their potential through counseling, support groups, mentoring, tutoring, supervised visiting, assistance in accessing higher education, and peer-led development activities. Youth benefit from the support of volunteers from faith- and community-based institutions.
Women’s Empowerment Project
The Women’s Empowerment Project serves women affected by the incarceration of their intimate partners or their children and women who are caring for children with an incarcerated parent. Women are able to find peer support, receive therapeutic counseling, and reduce their stress and isolation through the Project, which offers a toll-free hotline, a unique weekend workshop (LOL – Loving Out Loud) and solutions-based counseling.
Queensboro Family-Focused Reentry
Queensboro Family-Focused Reentry Project is a model approach to preparing families for the challenges of reentry and reintegration when people are released from incarceration. This pilot project at Queensboro Correctional Facility, a state prison in New York City, targets men who are within three months of release, providing transitional planning and family outreach, along with workshops and counseling designed to support them as they engage with the opportunities and barriers they find when they return home.
Strengthening Communities Children of Incarcerated Parents
Osborne provides leadership to the New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents, a collaborative system reform and advocacy effort that brings together public and private agencies and individuals concerned about how incarceration of parents affect children. The Initiative examines criminal justice, child welfare, education, and other policies and recommends changes that will improve outcomes for children at each stage of the process – from their parents arrest through incarceration and reentry.
Dutchess ReEntry
Dutchess ReEntry is one of many county-wide reentry initiatives in New York State. In partnership with the Dutchess County Criminal Justice Council and the Dutchess Collaborative ReEntry Project, a faith-based effort, the Osborne Association is the lead agency providing comprehensive reentry services to men and women returning to Dutchess County from state prisons. Dutchess ReEntry follows the National Institute of Correction's Transition from Prison to Community Initiative model, employing evidence-based practice along with traditional Osborne family and participant-centered programming.
For more information about the Osborne Association programs email
info@osborneny.org.