Jarrell Daniels found an ally in his fight to tamp down gang violence in the most unlikely of people — the prosecutor who put him behind bars for six years.
After being convicted for shooting a rival gang member, Daniels, now 31, is a PhD student in psychology and social intervention at New York University. He’s also the founder of Columbia University’s Justice Ambassadors Youth Council, a three-month program where young adults, particularly those involved in gangs, work with public officials to push reforms to the city’s justice system.
And he has a TED Talk that has been viewed more than 2 million times.
At Daniels’ side is Nigel Farinha, the Office of Special Narcotics prosecutor who worked on his case and helped get him convicted.
The two renewed acquaintances at a 2018 symposium on racial disparities in policing and have since appeared together numerous times. During their public discussions, they never immediately reveal how they first met. When they do, audience members, both said, are usually stunned that the two are partnering up, much less talking to one another.
Daniels and Farinha have also both confronted their share of skeptics about the odds of turning around those who have been imprisoned as well as those heading in that direction.
“But I think that any time law enforcement wants to do something that they’ve never done before that’s community facing, I think people should embrace it,” Daniels said during an interview at NYU. “At least give them a chance. I always tell people who challenge me, ‘Why do I work with prosecutors?’ And I say, ‘Listen, I will work with prosecutors who want to make change.’”
Farinha, meanwhile, knows his background and race — he’s from Hollis, Queens, and, like Daniels, is Black — will only go so far when talking to at-risk teens and young men.
“I recognize that there are parts of the community that aren’t going to listen to me, in my suit and my pocket square,” Farinha said. “I’m just not going to connect with them… but there are people that Jerrell can’t reach, who are skeptical of him, who think, ‘Wow — former gang member. Does he have some ulterior motives?’ We’ve seen that story before playout with other people who aren’t as sincere as Jarrell, and I get it.”
“We’ve got to recognize that we both want the same thing. We want to save lives, we want more safety for our communities, we want better experiences, a better outcome for people of color who are most impacted by gang violence and most affected by this.”
Daniels said some see him as a “unicorn,” but he sees himself differently: he’s someone who wants to show that anyone with access to resources and opportunities can excel.
In September 2011, Daniels, then a 17-year-old dropout and a member of the Bloods, was walking to the laundromat with his sister when rival gang members approached her — mistaking her for Daniels’ other sister, who was also caught up in the streets. Daniels, slashed in the face as he tried to protect his sister, pulled his gun and shot the attacker, seriously wounding him.
Daniels got away, then took a sharp turn, enlisting in Job Corps, where he studied masonry and later got his first job at McDonald’s. But the law caught up to him, and he was indicted in late 2012 as part of a larger gang takedown.
Daniels later pleaded guilty to assault and was shipped off to prison, but shortly before he was released in early 2018, he was transferred to Queensboro Correctional Facility in Long Island City and signed up for a prison college course. The course was taught by a Columbia professor who brought together eight inmates and eight Manhattan assistant district attorneys. Three of the ADAs, amazingly to Daniels, were Black.
The idea that sprouted was both simple and profound: these two groups can work together to help those about to leave prison make a smoother transition and not re-offend.
Hooked from the start, Daniels took a most unusual step and returned twice a week to prison after his release so he could finish the course.
The results, he said, were tangible, as suggestions he and the other inmates made became reality: the creation of a Department of Motor Vehicles office inside the Manhattan state parole office, as well as internet access at Queensboro for inmates who are close to being released so they could apply for jobs and Medicare.
“That seems like an obvious thing,” Daniels said. “He’s going to get out soon or she’s going to get out soon. You don’t want them to reoffend. One way to do it is if they have a job, but I can’t work on getting a job until I get out.”
“That’s the way it was,” he said.
Professor Geraldine Downey, who runs Columbia University’s Center for Justice and taught the Queensboro course, said Daniels is “extraordinarily impactful when he talks about his life’s experiences,” but she is not surprised by what he has accomplished.
“Given the opportunity of an education, people can turn their lives around,” said Downey, who last year spoke with Daniels in Belfast at a conference hosted by the Northern Ireland Prison Service. “They have the same kind of potential as the students of Columbia. They just didn’t have the opportunities in the neighborhoods in which they grew up.”
Daniels’ Justice Ambassadors program is one of many supported by the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, or MOCJ.
Another initiative is an ongoing randomized control trial that studies one of the city’s most problematic demographics — repeat offenders who commit an outsized chunk of violent crime — and connects them with the services the city hopes lead to a drop in recidivism.
Since the program started in January 2024, more than 2,000 participants — all of whom have at least one pending felony case — have received some form of counseling, with many others getting help with other issues, such as housing, said MOCJ Director Deanna Logan.
“We’re seeing people not only staying with their provider but engaging in the underlying services and — guess what — not re-offending,” Logan said. “We are actually looking at individuals. We’re creating, much like students, individual plans for the person.”
In Brooklyn, District Attorney Eric Gonzalez is taking a different approach to fight recidivism with Project Restore — trying to steer at-risk youth and young adults away from gang life before it’s too late.
Unlike alternatives to incarceration programs, Project Restore deals with those who have no pending cases but are showing signs of heading in that direction: those not working, not in school, sleeping all day, and hanging out all night.
“We’re not working with young men who have cases,” Gonzalez said. “We are working with young men who don’t have cases.
“It’s purely preventional,” he said.
