exalt partners with criminal justice constituents and schools to serve 165 NYC court-involved youth, ages 15-19, annually.

• Defense Attorneys: Lawyers from Legal Aid as well as from private nonprofits founded to provide legal representation to underserved communities - such as Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defenders - are increasingly linking their clients to our program.


• Juvenile Aftercare Services: exalt serves youth involved in, or exiting from OCFS (The Office of Children and Family Services) aftercare. OCFS is New York State's agency overseeing juvenile detention. (In New York youth 16 or older are sentenced as adults. While exalt doesn't serve youth younger than 15, many youth remain entrenched in the juvenile justice system for several years attached to cases that linger.)


• NYC Department of Probation: exalt works with youth in both Family Court and adult (Criminal and Supreme) courts and thus accepts referrals from both systems' Probation officers.


• New York City Public High Schools: While exalt takes referrals from almost any public high school that has court involved youth, we have a particularly strong emphasis on working with District 79 schools which include schools in detention facilities, suspension sites, and the increasing range of alternative high schools and GED programs that have emerged out of the Department of Education's Office of Multiple Pathways.


• Alternative to Incarceration / Detention Programs: These programs provide an intermediate sanction for youth who are facing jail or prison time. Youth adjudicated to these programs live at home in their communities and report regularly to the agencies. These programs typically provide case management or clinical mental health services while remaining accountable to the courts.


• Family Members or Peers: exalt has been gaining an increasingly strong reputation through word of mouth of former or current participants. Young people can refer themselves to us, or come through an individual in their lives (friend, sibling, parent, guardian) who has heard of us.

exalt provides services through distinct program cycles serving specific youth cohorts. Our intensive educational internship program consists of four key components: employability and life skills training; paid internships in youths' fields of interest; post-internship skill development and support services; and an alumni network that provides ongoing access to career development and other resources.

exalt approach is to be a transformative adolescent development experience rather than simply a job readiness program. All aspects of our program are designed to help participants develop four core skills: critical thinking, communication, creative problem solving, and "resource management" - the ability to identify, effectively utilize, leverage and develop resources. These core skills directly correlate to youths' ability to avoid involvement in the criminal justice system, more successfully engage in their education, and increase their employability and future financial stability.

Pre-Internship Training

• Participants (youth ages 15-19) are selected through a competitive interview process from partner sources. Youth are selected based on interest and motivation to participate in new experiences and apply themselves to learning new skills.


• Selected youth must be enrolled in school and exalt staff monitor their attendance, academic and behavioral performance through contact with school staff.


• Each program cycle starts with a group of fifteen youth who first participate in a five-week class, which runs Monday through Thursday, two hours per day building employment and life skills.


• exalt’s curriculum integrates core elements of work readiness training, such as interviewing and problem solving skill building, with activities that connect content to the broader context and circumstances of participants' lives.

Internships

• Participants who complete the five-week training interview for and work in paid internships for three months. They work approximately fifteen hours per week around their school schedules.


• Individually tailored internships developed to match youths’ interests, maturity levels, and experience are a core component of exalt and generate critical buy-in from participants which in turn allows exalt to effectively maintain high expectations for youth throughout all aspects of programming.


• During internships participants attend weekly two-hour classes to process and evaluate their experiences, continue learning in topics such as financial literacy and budgeting and plan for next steps including job searching and educational planning.


• Employer supervisors act as mentors, providing further education and career guidance.


• exalt staff maintain constant communication with employer partners, conducting regular site visits and making frequent phone calls to ensure a quality internship experience for youth and employers as well as to train employers in how to work with their interns effectively. 

Post-Internship Seminars and Services

• After they complete internships participants attend seminars bimonthly for the first two months and monthly for the following four months to continue the work they did in their weekly classes during internships. 


• Participants review critical skills learned during the training component of the program and link their learning from internships to concrete next steps for advancing their education and pursuing further employment. 


• Program Coordinators provide additional individualized support to participants to assist them further their personal and professional development.

Alumni Network

• exalt staff conducts regular outreach on at least a quarterly basis and provides support services to program alumni for three years after they complete the four months of intensive programming and six months of monthly seminars.


• Specific alumni events are held at least quarterly (in the form of seminars, guest speaker events, college tours) and staff continue to provide individualized support through assistance with job searches, college applications and referrals to other agencies for services outside the scope of exalt. 


• exalt recognizes that youth will have setbacks and regressions and therefore builds in long term support as a critical component of its work.


• exalt’s alumni programming allows graduates to stay connected to caring, mentoring adults as well as a positive peer network, a critical element in adolescents’ decision making processes.

$1.9 million in cost savings: Figure is based on exalt graduates' recidivism rate of under 8% vs. 70% for comparable New York City youth who exit detention. "Minimum" cost is calculated by projecting the costs of only 1-2 years of initial or further incarceration of one year's graduates using current per inmate annual cost - $68,000 - at Rikers Island.

$4.6 million in increased earnings: Figure is calculated using studies on criminal justice impact on earnings by Bruce Western. The $4 million is calculated by multiplying added value of $6000/year on earnings for a percentage of exalt graduates who enter without a criminal record (have Youthful Offender status or juvenile records sealed) and do not recidivate (i.e. do not suffer the future economic consequences associated with a criminal record).