Office of the NYC Comptroller

"This mail variance is just a band-aid, instead of addressing the real issues. People inside are not getting proper care, and they’re not getting programs, so they are desperate for something to fill their time. DOC needs to address that issue, not put one more barrier between incarcerated people and their loved ones,” said Marco Barrios, a member of Freedom Agenda and Criminal Justice Advocate with the Mental Health Project Urban Justice Center."

NYU Review of Law and Social Change

"This testimony was written based on an interview with a person incarcerated at Rikers Island...It was presented at a New York City Board of Corrections meeting by Kristen Brown and Fleming Smith, students with the NYU Solitary Confinement Project, which works in partnership with the Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project..."

Good Worker's News

"The NYPD has long been accused of mistreating and criminalizing citizens with mental illness or in crisis, according to previous reports from the [Mental Health Project of the] Urban Justice Center, New York University and more."

NYCity News

"Edwin Santana, community organizer with the Urban Justice Center and a formerly incarcerated person who had been held on Rikers, led the demonstration along with Victoria Phillips, co-chair of the NYC Department of Correction Young Adult Task Force [and an organizer with UJC's Mental Health Project]."

AMNY

"Members of the [UJC organized] Jails Action Coalition, #HALTsolitary Campaign, Freedom Agenda [of the Urban Justice Center], VOCAL-NY, and more set out faux body bags along with the names of those who have perished while imprisoned. Organizers claimed that about 1,000 inmates on the penal island suffer from mental illness, making the DOC facility a caretaker for mental health."

News12 Brooklyn

"Johnny Perez, a former inmate at Rikers Island, a member of the Jails Action Coalition [and a member of the Board of Directors for UJC], expressed how those deaths at the facility have impacted the city. "

NY Times

“‘Mayor Adams, your constituents are dying,’ Dr. Victoria A. Phillips, who works with the [Mental Health Project of the] Urban Justice Center, said at the rally. ‘You said you represent the Black and brown community, well, step up. Step up and save us."

Episcopal News Service

“Urban Justice Center's [Mental Health Project] will use their $100,000 grant to provide research-informed recommendations on the most humane way to provide supports and services to people with serious mental health concerns to keep them out of jail and the criminal legal system.”

The City

“I think they are on the right track,” said Victoria Phillips, the community, health and justice organizer for the Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project. “It becomes fluff — it becomes window dressing — when there’s no follow-up, when there’s no next step. This city is big on the grand idea and then the mediocre follow-through, and our community has suffered long enough.”